


downright complicated

by tielan



Series: sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sedoretu, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, M/M, Not Black Panther Compliant, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2018-09-15 06:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9223997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: Asedoretuis a four-person marriage, an intricate mesh of six dynamics - sexual and non-sexual - between Morning man, Evening woman, Morning woman, and Evening Man. But when asedoretuconsists of Captain America, the former Deputy Director of SHIELD, the Black Widow, and the Winter Soldier, things are bound to get downright complicated...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a multipairing/polyamorous fic with the pairings listed in the tags.
> 
> I strongly recommend reading the previous stories in the series to make sense of what's going on and where the story is at. Technically, it's all a single story; I've just broken it up into pieces that highlight the pairing relationships in the _sedoretu_.
> 
> So, when I began writing this story, Black Panther was just a name on a page of 'Phase 4' movies; now it has it's own canon, fandom, and fanfic section that isn't just "Darcy Lewis Goes To Wakanda And Becomes High Priestess Of Bast And Queen Of T'Challa's Heart". As such, the Wakanda I've written bears little resemblance to movie canon, and takes more of its being from the comics, but them's the breaks of writing fanfic.

Steve hears the cheers long before he hears the rhythm of feet and fists halfway down the corridor, and hastens his steps.

In the morning sunlight filtering in through the plate-glass windows facing east, Bucky’s fixed and refitted arm glitters bright as the chasing on the staff Maria’s just used to block his punch, her grunt audible with the effort of holding him at bay.

“Too much for you, Maria?”

The watching Wakandans ‘ooh’ at the teasing solicitude in Bucky’s question, but Maria’s eyes narrow. “You’d be surprised how much I can take, Barnes,” she replies, cool, but with a small smile teasing her lips.

“Easier said than done.”

Steve spots Natasha in the crowd as Bucky starts a series of offensive strikes. He begins to work his way towards her around the edge of the mat that serves as the fighting floor in the gym. All the while he keeps his eye on the fight between Bucky and Maria, predicting their moves, admiring their grace.

Bucky’s not swinging at full strength and speed – Maria would need much more than a staff to fight him off if he was really trying. But he's not toying with her, either - just not trying to win. Maria doesn’t seem daunted either by the long hard slog that she’s putting up against Bucky, or at the prospect of eventual defeat.

And they’re...beautiful.

It’s the grin that gleams on Bucky’s lips as he re-learns his capabilities using the Wakandan-developed neural interface instead of the one HYDRA had wired him into. It’s the tilt of Maria’s mouth as she stretches her skills and herself against someone faster and stronger. It’s the hint of laughter in Bucky’s eyes, the avid focus that Steve remembers from the war and before, when they were kids in New York. It’s the toss of her head as she raps Bucky across the knuckles and dodges his next blow, the flame of determination burning within her that drew him like a moth from the start.

He reaches Natasha’s side, and receives a brief, brilliant smile from her before she looks back at the sparring pair. Maria’s apparently in retreat, but given the smile playing about her mouth, Steve would bet that it’s very strategic. “How long have they been at it?”

“About ten minutes.” She draws in a slow, almost exultant breath. “They’re beautiful.”

What else can he say to the echoes of his own thoughts but, “Yes”?

“She’s tiring, though,” says the woman on Natasha’s other side. Nakia of the Dora Milaje – T’Challa’s personal bodyguards – studies Maria’s moves with the eye of a professional. “She probably won’t be keeping up too much longer.”

“She’ll have something up her sleeve,” Natasha says, never taking her eyes from the pair in the arena. “Maria always does.”

A moment later, Bucky’s eyes narrow, he dodges under Maria’s thrust, and his left hand grabs the end of the staff, interrupting the flow of her strike. He twists the length of vibranium-chased wood from her grip, unbalancing her at the same time, even as he steps around her, neat as a dancer, to catch her around the waist as he disarms her.

Steve knows the next move, can see it in his mind: a half-turn, a dip, a kiss—

Maria’s hand slips between them, and the air suddenly buzzes with the fierce, ozonic snap of electricity. Bucky yelps as miniature lightning snakes up his metal arm. He shakes his hand like he’s been stung, and something small and silver dislodges and falls to the floor. Maria’s already stepped around him, putting space between them, but Bucky grabs her wrist and yanks her back, catching her around the waist again and neatly spinning her down to the floor, his hand at her throat.

In spite of the swiftness of it, it’s not a violent move. It’s graceful, almost choregraphed, the muscles of Bucky’s shoulders and back controlled as he lays Maria out. And even sprawled out and prone, Maria’s eyes are wide and startled but unafraid.

A breath jerks through her throat, even as her chin lifts, the moment electric as the crackle of whatever she used to disable Bucky.

Is it Steve who first makes the movement, drawing her gaze, or is it Natasha? He doesn’t know, only that Maria’s gaze falls to him and a bright flush stings her cheeks as her gaze shifts to Natasha. Bucky turns, following her gaze, and the grin broadens briefly before he leans in and murmurs something that shifts Maria’s expression to a glare.

Steve makes himself swallow, his mouth dry, his fingers curling into his palms. His heart is pounding under his ribcage, and it takes him a moment to hear what Nakia is saying to Natasha.

“A word to the wise?” Her gaze lifts to Steve as though in challenge before she looks to Natasha and tilts her head to indicate the pair on the mat. “They would be wise not to be public in blasphemy so long as they stand within our sovereign borders.”

Steve tenses as Bucky hauls Maria up, pulling her in close – closer than necessary, perhaps? Yes, Bucky has been sharing a suite with Maria, but Bucky said it wasn't— And Maria doesn’t respond to Bucky like _that_ —

Does she?

“There are many who still hold to the old ways within Wakanda,” Nakia continues. “The King might overlook it between his personal guests, but it will not sit well with the traditionalists if such a relationship comes to light.”

“They’re not.” Natasha’ voice is calm, but Steve can hear the edge beneath it. Anger? Or uncertainty?

“If you say so.”

On the floor, one of the Wakandan doctors – the biotechnology expert – has approached Bucky, is gesturing at the arm, and talking excitedly as Bucky rolls his shoulders and tilts his head from side to side, a stretch that’s as familiar to Steve as the way Maria’s hands lock together behind her back and she pulls out her shoulders and chest, listening with a glittering almost-smile teasing her lips.

Steve’s pulse beats beneath his chest and in his balls.

In that moment, he wants them. Both of them. Either of them. He wants to stride over there and stroke his fingers down Bucky’s cheek while his mouth fastens onto Maria’s smile, to watch her lashes drop as her hands clutch his arms in heavy anticipation while a metal hand gropes his shaft, fingers his balls.

Beside him, Natasha exhales, a soughing breath that shivers with hunger, and when he turns his head to look at her, the bright reflection of Morning’s yearning for Evening’s shadow gleams in her eyes.

It slams into him, then, hard as Thor’s fist in his gut.

_When we’re older, and find an Evening and a Morning wife..._

Standing at the edge of the mats beside Natasha, with Bucky and Maria before him, Steve sees the shape of it at last – the old promise made and kept, and feels the rightness of it—Seventy years and loss and living and acceptance and yearning and denial and satisfaction—

_Hers. Mine. Ours—_

Beside him, Nakia turns, and murmurs, “Well. What’s this?”

Then Steve hears a light, familiar voice making easy conversation. His breath catches, and his chest squeezes tight. T’Challa answers in the same easy manner, the tone courteous and smiling, even as Steve makes his suddenly-reluctant muscles turn from Bucky and Maria towards the two people approaching them.

Sharon’s eyes meet his, direct and a little challenging, but her smile is warm. “Steve.”

“Sharon. Hey.” His tongue feels stiff in his mouth, the greeting awkward. Still, he holds out an arm to her, instinctively leaning in to brush a kiss past her cheek. She turns her head and just catches the corner of his mouth—

Heat briefly burns his nape, the thought of the kiss he wanted less than a minute ago stinging his lips.

Steve pulls back. “When did you get in?”

“Just this morning.” Her smile is a little amused, but he thinks there’s a touch of reserve in it, before she rallies and looks at Natasha. “Romanoff.”

“Carter. I heard you were working in Turkey with Omir Aydin?”

“I was. Maria required secure transport for some goods; and his Majesty granted me permission to make the trip in person.”

Steve glances at Maria as she comes up, heat and exertion glowing bright across her skin.

“Sharon.” She nods at T’Challa. “Your Majesty.”

“I see Barnes is trying out the new prosthetic.” T’Challa looks behind them. “Is Dr. Ngombe happy with his work?”

Maria shrugs. “You’ll have to ask him. He’s interrogating Barnes now.”

Steve half-turns to look for Bucky, only vaguely hearing Natasha’s arch query about new bruises and Maria’s negative answer. When he turns back, Sharon is watching him, her expression questioning. Guilt makes him slide his arm around her shoulders – that, and the way Natasha is standing, her arms crossed, her body quarter-turned towards Maria, as though about to meet a threat, although whether the threat is from Sharon or T’Challa or himself, Steve doesn’t know.

“How’ve you been?”

“Doing okay.” She softens under his arm, leaning into him. “How about you? How’s he doing?”

Steve looks over at Bucky, who’s sauntering over, not quite the old swagger, but with an ease and comfort that Steve never saw in the Winter Soldier. “He's doing well. I think.”

Bucky pauses just at Maria’s shoulder, and his gaze rests on Sharon, speculative for a moment before he holds out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve actually met,” he says, a little tentative. “James Barnes.”

“Sharon Carter.”

“The woman who has Steve roped and tied.” Natasha’s smiling, but Steve blinks and sees the echo of surprise in Maria's face, as a faint flicker of a frown crosses Bucky’s brow.

Sharon doesn’t frown – at least not visibly. But her response of, “Not quite,” is gently repressive before she turns back to Bucky. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet Steve’s Bucky.”

“Considering the last time we did, I was trying to take you out, I doubt that.” Bucky’s gaze is dark, and Steve opens his mouth to remind him that what happened wasn’t Bucky’s fault.

Sharon beats him to the punch. “You were programmed. And desperate. I’m guessing you’re not anymore.”

“Thanks to the Wakandans.” Bucky nudges Maria with one shoulder. “And to Hill here.”

“After you nearly strangled her.”

Natasha earns a roll of the eyes from Maria for that. Steve guesses it’s a private joke, particularly from Maria’s reply.

“At least I won’t have to use my sex hotline voice this time.”

Bucky grins with an old, teasing smirk. “And what if I have a thing for your sex hotline voice?”

The look Maria gives him is exasperated but fond.

Steve feels something curdle in him, discomforting.

Nakia is asking about the device Maria used to make the voltage. And something in Steve twists as Bucky leans in beside her ear and murmurs that she'd better turn the heat up next time. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t step away from him, doesn’t give him a pointed, meaningful look to say they’re in a public place around other people. Instead she replies with something Steve doesn’t hear for the pounding of blood in his head, but can easily interpret as a provocative comment from the shift in Bucky’s expression.

It takes him a moment to realise that Sharon is leaning against him, her shoulder a slight pressure against his arm, and when he meets her glance the question in her eyes is plain as she tilts her head at Maria and Bucky.

He shakes his head, ever so slightly. They’re not. They’re both Evening, and while that doesn’t have to matter in these modern times... They can’t be.

_They would be wise not to be public in blasphemy..._

They're not.

T’Challa turns to him and Sharon. Steve almost expects him to say something about Bucky and Maria, but he only smiles at Sharon. “I must leave shortly, however, the Guestkeepers will see that you have everything you need, as well a rooms close to Captain Rogers, Ms. Carter.”

“Oh, I’m sure that separate rooms won’t be necessary—”

“It is customary.” T’Challa smiles at her, courteous and somehow every inch royalty. He makes pronouncements the way Thor does, as though it's assumed, assured, agreed upon. “You will join us for dinner tonight – allow the Guestkeepers to know if there is anything you require, although I am sure Ms. Romanoff and Commander Hill will be glad to give you assistance too.”

Steve isn’t so sure of that. As Sharon thanks T’Challa for his hospitality, he glances over towards Bucky and Maria and encounters Natasha’s gaze – a look as flat as any he’s ever received from her. After a moment, though, she smiles, and although it’s warm and friendly, Steve knows her well enough to see that it’s a front: the perfectly-cultivated mask that he hasn’t seen in a long time – since before the Accords, perhaps not since just after Sokovia when she was getting over Bruce’s rejection.

After a moment, she detaches herself from the other two and comes over. “Your Majesty.”

“Ms. Romanoff.”

Both greeting and answer have enough lean to them to count as flirting, and Steve blinks, even as Natasha continues. “So are you going to have the time to make good on your offer to take us on a tour through the capital today?”

“Sadly, Ms. Romanoff, tonight’s dinner and the arrival of Ms. Carter don’t allow it. However, Sera Okoye has expressed a willingness to take you and your companions touring through the city without me - if you will accept her in my stead.”

“I look forward to it. And I’m sure Ms. Carter will be more than welcome to come along.” Natasha looks at Sharon, brightly. “We haven’t had time to go out and see the city, and they’re still suspicious of foreigners walking the streets unattended.”

“I’d love to,” is Sharon’s prompt answer. "We hear so much about Wakanda, but nobody knows anything about it..."

Steve’s eye drifts over to where Dr. Ngombe has again engaged Bucky in a discussion about the arm, and meets Maria’s gaze. He excuses himself from the conversation and crosses over to her, detouring around Bucky with a brief squeeze of the shoulder before drawing Maria away a step or two. Not that he needs to move them away– Dr. Ngombe is hustling Bucky over to the window, presumably for better light to examine something with the arm...

And Maria watches them go, a smile playing about her lips before she turns to Steve and sees his expression. “What is it?”

 _It_ is desire – a hard jolt of it earthing in Steve’s belly, hot and thick in his veins.

Her skin is sheened with sweat, her tank top fitted and sleek, showing off the line of her shoulders, of her throat, skimming her body – slim and lean rather than curved and sleek. And Steve remembers how she relaxed after sex, before the world and all its issues rushed back in on her, when he could watch, touch, taste openly, and think about how to get her to relax more and stress less.

He drags his gaze away before he does something phenomenally stupid, and his gaze meets Bucky’s – a narrow-eyed smirk before his mouth quirks.

Maria’s turned to follow his gaze, and when she turns back, she’s smiling. “There’ll be no living with him after this.”

Steve frowns at her. “Are you—?” He bites that question off before he can finish it and starts again. “Be careful around him, Maria.”

The smile fades. “Are you warning me away from him?”

“No. Not exactly. Look,” he says, extemporising, “Nakia said the traditionalists in Wakanda are strict about moiety morality. And Bucky’s still getting used to having options again. I don’t want to see him hurt.”

And he doesn’t want to watch Maria accept Bucky’s teasing and laughter the way she never did Steve’s. But that’s past the point. He can’t say that, as much as he wants to. It brings up too many questions, too many aches that he should have dealt with eighteen months ago when she stopped accepting his invitations out to dinner, stopped coming back to his apartment.

“So, stay away from him?”

“That’s not what I said—”

“But it’s what you meant.” Her voice has cooled, growing distant – Commander Hill rather than Maria.

“I said I don’t want to see him hurt.” Irritation claws at him, familiar frustration when it comes to dealing with Maria. Her distinctions are clear, her ability to compartmentalise effortless, and he’s always been on her outside, even when she let him into her bed and her body.

“He’s stronger than you think. And you need to let him work out who he is without you hovering, Steve.”

Maria’s reply is in the controlled voice that says she’s holding onto her temper by her teeth, and Steve bites back the retort that _she_ needs to let Bucky work out who he is without winding herself into his soul and then ripping it apart.

“Steve?” The faint change of air behind him gives him warning enough not to startle at her touch as Sharon leans up against his back, her cheek against his shoulder. “Private conversation?”

“Not at all,” Maria answers easily.

“Ah.” Sharon takes a deep breath, leaning into Steve’s shoulder. “Well, I’d like to see my rooms and have something to eat before we go over the reports.”

“That’s fine.” A wave of Maria’s hand indicates her sweaty state. “I could do with some freshening up myself. How about we say 1000 hours? That’ll give us time before lunch.”

“I can do that.”

There’s a surreality to the conversation between the two women – civil, easy, even friendly – at least to Steve’s ears. And maybe Sharon doesn’t know about him and Maria, but Maria can see well enough what’s been between him and Sharon and she doesn’t seem to care. It’s not that he _wants_ her to be jealous...

_You wanted to be a soldier, like all the rest. And now you are._

No, Steve doesn’t want Maria to be jealous. He just...he just wishes he mattered to her, even a little.

Bucky saunters up and leans on Maria’s shoulder. “So, what’s happening?” He glances at Steve. “You want to go a round?”

Steve does, but it’s probably not wise. He’s all churned up inside after watching Maria face off against Bucky, after suddenly seeing Sharon again after six weeks’ separation, after coming face to face with how little their affair meant to Maria.

“Not now. Maybe later.”

“Later we’re heading out on the tour,” Bucky reminds him. “Which Ms. Carter’s welcome to join, if she’s free?”

“His Majesty’s already invited me.”

“How long are you here for?”

“I have a few days. Unless Maria needs me to go out again?”

“We’ll see.” Maria’s gaze wanders the room briefly before coming back to them. “I’ve put some issues on hold while dealing with Barnes here; I’ll have to pick them up again before they go cold.”

Bucky tenses – a fractional shift of his body as he looks down at her. “You’re leaving?”

“I can’t babysit you forever.” Her gaze is direct and brisk, but there’s something like an apology in her voice. “You have to learn to go out in the big bad world all on your lonesome, James.”

“He won’t be alone.”

Steve doesn’t mean it to sound as belligerent as it comes out. But it’s the way she uses Bucky’s name like a teasing caress, the intimacy of both the question and the manner of the reply, the way Bucky’s looking at her that sparks his anger. Bucky’s expression holds echoes of the careful reserve of the man who didn’t want to be the Winter Soldier again, the man who bore his memories like they were a burden he could never be rid of. Steve had hoped never to have to see that expression on Bucky’s face again.

And  _this_ is what he was warning Maria against: setting hooks in Bucky’s heart and then tearing him apart when she walks away – because she always walks away.

Steve survived Maria’s indifference. He doesn’t want to see Bucky hurt the same way.

Although it seems too late already, Bucky barely seems to hear Steve. “I thought—” He breaks off as T’Challa and Nat join them. “We’ll discuss this later.”

Maria’s expression suggests grim he can argue what he likes but he’ll never budge her. Steve knows how that goes.

“Argument?” Nat inquires archly.

“Disagreement.” Maria’s smile is careful and polite. “With your permission, your Majesty, I’d like a private word – five minutes, no more. I promise.”

They watch her and T’Challa walk away, and Natasha looks up at Bucky. “What was that about?”

Bucky drags his gaze from Maria. “A disagreement. I’ll talk her around.”

The look in his eyes is one that Steve recognises. A target is set, and Bucky is going to do whatever it takes to see it carried out. Steve can protest all he likes, but he’ll have no more luck talking Bucky out of it than Bucky ever had trying to talk Steve out of his choice of action.

Sharon makes an inquiry about how well Bucky knows Maria, and Steve half-listens, but he’s watching the conversation between T’Challa and Maria – the way T’Challa is frowning, the restless flick of Maria’s fingers as she speaks...

She half-turns and her gaze meets Steve’s. Her mouth twists and tightens, and her gaze slides off him and over to Bucky, softens with something like longing before she pokers up and turns away.

The thing curdling in Steve’s stomach twists unpleasantly.

He thinks it might be jealousy.

 


	2. Chapter 2

When Maria emerges from the shower after the afternoon run with Okoye, she’s a little surprised to discover N’Kechi j’Kuwali waiting in the outer antechamber of her suite, as patiently as though she’s a diplomat who’s forgotten an appointment.

“No,” he says in his deep, laughing voice when she welcomes him in, “you did not forget a meeting.”

“Good to know. My brain is everywhere these days and half the time I don’t know if I’m coming or going.” She’s been busy ever since she got to Wakanda, but the last week has been rather more crazy than even she’s accustomed to. “Can I call the Guestkeepers to bring you something?”

“Whatever you planned to eat and drink for your replenishment will be sufficient, Maria.”

“Melon-water and custard fruit?” At his assent, she orders it, then gestures him to the brightly-patterned couch, and hastily twists up her damp hair as she seats herself. She was planning to blow-dry her hair, but it can wait.

Openly acknowledged as T’Challa’s lover by the court, and cousin to Okoye, the leader of the Dora Milaje, N’Kechi is a man with not only the ear and of the King, but his clear affection. If Maria blinked the first time the two men greeted each other, she didn’t otherwise show her surprise at the tenderness between the two men. In a society that holds to moiety as strongly as Wakanda, it’s considered nothing to have a same-sex lover, even as the Dora Milaje – the pool of potential wives for the newly-raised King – vie for T’Challa’s favour.

He’s also been an excellent source of information about Wakanda and the court ever since Pepper sent Maria as ambassador to Wakanda on behalf of Stark Industries. Courteous and clever, lean and good-looking; if N’Kechi needs to speak with her, then Maria knows it’s a matter worth listening to.

However, it’s obviously nothing urgent, since he sits back against the cushions and his gaze lingers on her damp hair. “If you were in the middle of preparations...”

“No, it’s fine. I got back from a run with Okoye, and just had a shower. My hair can wait on your business.”

“I confess I have no business, here, Maria.” N’Kechi smiles as he spreads his hands wide. “I am here for nothing more than the pleasure of your company – if you have the time.”

She eyes him, several random comments coming together to form a broader picture. “Did Okoye say that I’d probably be free if you got me now?”

“She mentioned that you were frequently busy these days, and it is possible that times when we judged you free were discussed...”

Maria smiles, both amused and bemused by N’Kechi’s intent and intensity. “Everything seems to have gone a little crazy since we deprogrammed Barnes.”

“How is he recovering?”

“Well enough, under the circumstances.” Where the circumstances involve being turned into a brainwashed killing machine, assassinating innumerable people through the years, and being wiped ‘clean’ after every mission, never permitted to retain any of his memories in the immediate moment. Now that they’ve taken out as much of the brainwashing as they’ve been able to find, though, some of the memories are coming back – both the good and the bad.

Maria shifts the focus of the topic.“He’s taking well to the new biotech arm. Dr. Ngombe and his team are very enthusiastic about the tests and their results.”

The bell rings to notify the Guestkeepers bringing in the refreshments, and Maria slides forward to pour the service, only to have N’Kechi touch her wrist.

“Allow me.” He pours out the melon-water from the glazed serving jug before handing her the cup with its matching glaze. “If I recall aright, Dr. Ngombe has been at T’Challa for a more extensive test of his nanotech limbs for some time.”

“How would that work? The Black Panther doesn’t require prosthetics.”

“True. However there are always those who wish for more – to be more, to be ‘better’, whether stronger or faster, or more than human.” N’Kechi’s gaze meets hers, knowingly. “Your Captain Rogers wished for such.”

 _He’s not mine._ The words rise to her lips; she swallows them down. None of them were ever hers.

“His circumstances were specific and very situational.”

“I do not cast shade upon his honour or intent,” N’Kechi tilts his head. “The spirit of the Black Panther is also one that seeks strength for the protection of the weak. But the changes wrought upon Captain Rogers by Abraham Erskine and Howard Stark have set the standard for all modern human modification – in Wakanda as well as throughout the world. So it is no wonder Dr. Ngombe is delighted to be working with the Winter Soldier.”

“You have some reservations?”

“Some. They are of little note – T’Challa trusts him, and that is sufficient for me, if not for my cousin.”

“Okoye is Dora Milaje – she’s trained to look for threats against the king. Although,” Maria reflects, “that doesn’t explain why they’ve taken to Natasha.”

“I cannot speak as to the reasons of the Dora Milaje,” N’Kechi laughs. “But better the blade you know is being sharpened than the one you don’t see coming.”

“Is that why the Council keeps on asking on whether the Avengers initiative is settling down in Wakanda?”

“It is likely.” If the prospect of an auxiliary group of Avengers on Wakandan soil bothers him, N’Kechi doesn’t show it. Maria wonders if this is a function of his intimacy with T’Challa – he not only trusts his liege and his lover, but he knows many of the things that go on behind the scenes and so he feels he has less to fear.

Then again, would she have come to trust the Avengers as fast as she did if not for her connections with Natasha and Steve, with Clint through S.H.I.E.L.D, and with Tony through Pepper and Stark Industries? Probably not.

But she trusted the individuals and because of them, she trusted in the Avengers Initiative, the smaller things making up a significant portion of her trust in the larger...

“Maria?” N’Kechi sets his finished glass down on the table, and turns towards her, his hands resting on his knees, the cream of his shirt warming the cool dark of his skin. “I wish to ask a question that might be considered personal. You are not obligated to answer it. Did you ever have an...understanding with Captain Rogers or Ms. Romanoff?”

Her hands don’t shake as she sets down her drink. “No.” Then, because his expression hasn’t changed at her answer, and she suspects that if he saw that much, he can guess at most of it, she qualifies, “It wasn’t an understanding.”

“Ah.” His gaze drops for a moment, then rises to hers again. “Until Ms. Carter arrived, I imagined you had an...informal _sedoretu_ agreement with Captain Rogers and Ms. Romanoff.”

“No.” Maria keeps her voice light although her throat feels small and the air in the room suddenly stifling. “There were no agreements.”

“It causes pain. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. It was past and done before I came here to oversee Barnes’ deprogramming.”

“I see.”

N’Kechi regards her for a long moment, a thoughtful twist to his mouth. Maria waits for whatever it is that he’s going to say to her, and doesn’t think about the ache in her chest. She knew better than to think that she was good enough to sit with the cool kids, accepted and acceptable. She just...forgot it for a while.

 _I don’t want him hurt._ The anger and frustration in Steve was palpable that morning, the burning protectiveness that made it clear that Bucky was one of his people as Maria was not, and that a friendship between them was untenable. In the days since, he’s been carefully distant, nearly always in Sharon’s company, frequently in Bucky’s, smiling and jocular and brutally polite.

Sometimes Maria wonders when her heart will learn its limits.

She’s not anyone special, just a woman who walks one step behind a man, doing a thankless job. Whether that man is Nick Fury or Tony Stark or Steve Rogers doesn’t matter; she’s necessary, just not important. And yes, she’s always known this, but she let herself forget it.

There are some things she can’t have – things that aren’t for people like her. That’s just the way it is.

N’Kechi clears his throat. “I think you know I have admired you for some time, Maria. I imagined that your...interest in Sergeant Barnes’ recovery was part of your arrangement with Rogers and Romanoff.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Now I know.” His eyes are steady and intent on hers. “We have always been friendly, although you have never shown interest in me beyond friendship. However, you are also not one to put your heart on display, your feelings are concealed more than they are shown, and so I ask and hope you will take it in good faith. Would you consider taking me as a lover, in pleasure and in friendship?”

Maria blinks. Yes, she’s flirted with N’Kechi – he flirted first, and she thought it harmless teasing. And yes, she’s admired him – his long, supple build, lean as a runner compared with T’Challa’s muscular heft. And yes, they’ve gotten to know each other quite well in the orbit of T’Challa and the Wakandan court... But this is something entirely new.

She asks the first question that springs to mind. “Shouldn’t T’Challa have a say in this?”

“He already has.”

Maria has to fight the urge to drop her gaze. As it is, her shoulders and chest are hot. The King of Wakanda has approved her to share his lover; that’s...huge. And more than a little terrifying. While she trusts N’Kechi’s offer at face value, she’s a little more suspicious when it comes to T’Challa. For someone as steeped and certain in his responsibilities as T’Challa to trust Maria with his lover...

N’Kechi is waiting, his expression open and expectant.

“I need—” There’s a moment when she’s on the verge of saying, _I need to consult with Natasha._ Only that’s ridiculous. This is not Natasha’s business – whatever their past, they haven’t been sexually intimate in two years, content to rest merely in each others’ orbits. And Natasha hasn’t moved on Maria at all in the last six weeks, with ample opportunity.

No, Natasha has nothing to do with this.

Maria takes a deep breath. “I have to think about it, N’Kechi. It’s—”

The sound of the outer door sliding open brings her halting words to a stop as Bucky strides in.

“Maria, did you know we’re expecte—? Oh.” He takes in N’Kechi’s presence with visible surprise. There’s a moment of silence. “I’m interrupting. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t sound it or act it. Maria frowns at him, but only receives a perfectly open, utterly bland look in return.

“We’re expected...?” Maria manages to prompt.

“At dinner tomorrow night, with the Queen Mother and her daughter. That seems like an unusually bold move,” Bucky notes, looking to N’Kechi. “Especially given I’m still wanted by assorted intelligence agencies.”

N’Kechi smiles at him, undaunted by Bucky’s interruption or his question. “Does T’Challa seem like the cautious type to you?”

A shrug. “I guess not.” Bucky heads to the kitchenette to get a glass. Clearly he doesn’t intend to leave them to their conversation, and as Maria turns back to N’Kechi she sees the smile turn rueful.

Still, his eyes gleam with bright good humour. “You wished time to think about my offer? Consider this your reprieve.”

Maria will. “I’ll see you out.”

She follows N’Kechi to the door where he turns and takes her hand, out of sight of Bucky. “Never doubt, Maria, your friendship is not given lightly, and I treasure that in itself. But I hope you will seriously consider my offer.”

He looks like he’s about to say more – or to lean in and kiss her, but after the slightest of hesitations, he only turns her hand over and kisses the palm. Then he bows himself out with a light step, leaving Maria standing in the entryway feeling a little dizzy.

The lover of the King of Wakanda just propositioned her.

Yes, she likes N’Kechi – apart from his intelligence and his willingness to treat her as a person in her own right, there’s a generosity of spirit and a lightheartness to him that’s enjoyable to be around. But accepting even a casual relationship would mean weathering scrutiny from T’Challa’s Privy Council, to say nothing of the court.

When she goes back into the lounge, Bucky is sitting on the couch, a glass of melon water in hand, staring out the suite windows up into the cloud-streaked afternoon. He turns to look at her, his expression carefully blank.

“He wants you.”

“He’s a friend.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t want you.” He looks keenly at her. “Are you going to bed him?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Bucky’s gaze is too clear on her, too sharp; he reads her far better than she’s comfortable being seen. It doesn’t help that in the last couple of weeks, she allowed herself to start to relax, comfortable in the company of Natasha and Steve – people she knew, people who knew her, people she could trust.

Just not with her heart.

Maria picks up her glass and drains it without answering Bucky. Setting the cup down on the table, she changes the topic with pointed distinction. “What did Dr. Ngombe have to say about the arm?”

His jaw tightens, his gaze shuttering as he looks away, but he accepts the redirection of the converstaion.

“He’s happy with the neural interface – and so am I,” he adds with the glimmer of a smile. “We’ve fiddled with the fine-tuning for the last couple of days, and now all I have to do is learn basic maintenance. I should be okay to leave Wakanda in the next two weeks.”

“The identities I’ve set up for you should hold you for the next six months, unless you trigger a full international manhunt.” She studies him for a moment.

With his hair combed and tied back, and his jaw clean-shaven, his face filled out from two months of certainty and security, and the new nanotech-sheathed arm which is presently simulating flesh, Bucky doesn’t look like the last reports of the Winter Soldier. Instead he presents as a good-looking man, with perhaps a tiredness about the eyes and a world-weary twist to his smile.

The Wakandan behavioural scientists have been schooling him on how not to move like someone with military training, Natasha has been working through the nightmares with him, and Maria has been taking him through the procedures for making contact once he’s out in the world.

She doesn’t know what he’s been doing with Steve.

“Where will you be going?” He shifts on the couch, facing her. “You said you had things you left cold when you came here to deal with me. I could go with you.”

The offer is a little unexpected. Given how focused Steve has been on Bucky the last week, she’s a little surprised that they haven’t already made plans.

“You’re not going with Steve?”

“I don’t think Sharon would like it.” His smile is thin and a little bitter. “She’s made it quite clear she’s not going to share.”

Maria’s not surprised that Sharon isn’t going to share Steve – few women would be eager to share Steve with Bucky Barnes, especially if they’re not moiety. What surprises her is the part where Sharon made it _obvious_. Doing anything as blunt as warning Bucky away seems...uncharacteristic of Sharon.

“Sharon _told_ you—?”

Bucky shrugs and stretches out his legs. “I overheard her interrogating a couple of Dora Milaje about having to share T’Challa with N’Kechi. They said it was just the moiety way. She made all the noises about moiety being all very well for some people, but sharing wasn’t for her.”

“Did she know you were there?”

“Maybe? I didn’t think so – it was out in the upper gardens, and I was meditating away from the main concourse...” Bucky frowns as he looks to Maria. “Peggy was moiety – shouldn’t Carter be moiety as well?”

“Peggy’s mother was Sharon’s grandfather’s first wife. His second wife had no moiety – was one of the modernists who thought it old-fashioned and unnecessary. So Sharon doesn’t have moiety and didn’t grow up understanding it.”

“Some people learn acceptance when they’re adults.”

“It’s one thing to learn something, another thing to accept the scenario for yourself.”

And quite another to face the prospect of sharing Steve Rogers with Bucky Barnes – especially for a woman brought up in monogamy, who probably went in expecting the relationship to be exclusive. Even for a woman whose maternal grandparents lived in a moiety arrangement with a couple in the same apartment block, it’s a daunting thought.

“So no, Carter isn’t going to share Steve with me?” Bucky exhales. “Crazy thing is, I never expected—I mean, everything has changed—”

The realisation is sharp and surprising, and Maria doesn’t understand why she didn’t see it sooner. “You made a promise.”

“When we’re older and find an Evening and Morning wife...”

It has the ring of a vow to it and Maria drops her gaze to her hands, white-knuckled in her lap. At least he had the promise.

_It wasn’t an understanding._

Maria carefully unclenches her hands and swallows her bitterness – this isn’t about her. Still, it takes her a moment to find her voice.

“Steve’s been a constant in your life – the parts of it with memory – like you’ve been a constant in his. That’s not something you just let go.”

“It’s not something you just bring back up after seventy years spent killing people, either.”

“Do you think Steve cares about that? When he moved helicarriers and Avengers to find you?”

He gives a short laugh. “Helicarriers and Avengers...I like that.” Then he stares broodingly out at the late afternoon sky, fierce azure over the jungles of Birnin Zana. “Sometimes I think the danger is that Steve _doesn’t_ see anything but the kid who promised him forever.”

Steve sees what he wants to see, and he does as he wants to do, and in these days and these times, who’s going to question the unquestionable? Maria understands.

“You’re not those boys anymore.”

“I think...if we had more time...if there was an opportunity...” Bucky grimaces and his expression shifts to a quiet determination. “There isn’t time and he’s with Carter, now. So, no, I’m not going with Steve.”

“Natasha?”

Bucky gives her a look – no words, just the expression – and Maria reconsiders.

After Wakanda, Natasha will likely make her own way through the world, dropping in and out the way she always has, even when they worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s something of a wandering, solitary existence but it’s what Natasha prefers – a kite in the wind, flying high, but with someone holding the end of her string to bring her safely back in.

Maria reassesses her initial thought that Bucky would take to Natasha’s itinerant life. She should have remembered that the Winter Soldier was brought back to rest among ‘comrades’, stored back at base until he was sent out to act again. Even after he escaped Hydra, he had a home base – somewhere he stayed while he tried to piece himself back together again. And although the Winter Soldier program could wipe the operative clean after every mission, he’d still been built on the core of Bucky Barnes, Brooklyn boy, who made a promise to Steve Rogers before Steve was Captain America, and who wanted adventure and excitement before settling down with Steve and their Morning and Evening wives.

She swallows twice before she gets control of her voice. That life – the certainty of being loved, of being backed up, of having somewhere to hide away – that’s for other people, not Maria Hill.

“I can’t...” She pauses; rephrases. “I’m not a refuge, you know. I can’t offer you sanctuary like T’Challa...”

And then the breath is stolen from her chest.

N’Kechi asked T’Challa for permission to court her, and T’Challa said yes. Which means...what T’Challa is effectively offering _her_ is _sanctuary._

Sanctuary...and the opportunity to work world security out of the Wakandan state?

Surely not.

And yet...T’Challa knows who she is, what she is, what she does. He knows her connections with Fury, with Stark Industries, with the Avengers. He knows she plans to go back into world security again, to make what she can of what she has left.

He wouldn’t.

Would he?

“I don’t need somewhere to hide.” Bucky speaks into the silence, unaware of Maria’s abrupt revelation, or perhaps just needing to get his own confession out. “I just...I’d like not to be alone for a while.”

 _Ah._ That, at least, she understands. After so long solitary, a little company would be nice.

“All right.”

“All right?”

“It’s just to get you started,” she warns at Bucky’s growing smile. “Sooner or later you’ll be on your own.”

“Thrown out the nest to see if I can fly?”

“You can fly,” Maria retorts coolly. “You have before and you will again.”

The smile develops a wry tilt. “Thanks.”

She stands and indicates the tray. “You can thank me by taking that to the guestkeeper station outside and showing yourself out so I can dry my hair properly.”

“Your hair looks fine to me.”

“It’s wet.”

“Still looks fine.” Bucky puts his hands up when she glares at him and starts setting glasses on the tray. “You hadn’t heard about dinner tomorrow?”

“Not until you mentioned it.” And the part of her that is calculating world security in Wakanda wonders if there’s more to this dinner, too. “The Princess and the Queen Mother, you said?”

“Apparently it’s a rather big party – still private, since they’re inviting us, but reasonably official.” Bucky picks up the tray. “I wonder what T’Challa means by it.”

Maria wonders too, and as she makes her way to the bathroom, she considers that once her hair is dry, she might make an appointment to see T’Challa when next he’s free. It’ll give her the chance to not only verify N’Kechi’s offer, but also to ask what else T’Challa intends – if he intends anything. And if he does...

There are some things Maria can’t have.

But maybe there are some things she _can_.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha storms into the ‘sitting space’ created by the intersection of two corridors in this part of the palace and stops short, her skirts swirling silkily around her calves.

James – it’s still difficult to think of him as Steve’s Bucky now – rises from the couch over by the window, slow and graceful and easy, as unlike the sharply economical movements of the Winter Soldier as Natasha’s ever seen. “I thought you might like an escort to dinner.”

“Clearly so did someone else.” At his frown, she gestures at their outfits – her high-necked collar and flared skirts a matching sapphire to his sleeveless Wakandan longvest and trousers. The designs picked out in copper and gold on her outfit are marked in silver on his, but they were clearly made to match.

“Oh.” He doesn’t blush, but he blinks as though it never occurred to him. “That wasn’t me.”

“I didn’t think it was.”

In the midst of her own emotional turmoil, Natasha finds herself smiling at his sudden bashfulness. After a moment, he smiles back and offers her his right arm. The gesture brings a warmth that almost dispels the tension that’s been in lingering so coldly in her all afternoon.

If it’s a little surreal to be drawn in close enough to feel the heat of his body rising off his skin, it’s also comforting: someone to cling to when she’s feeling so adrift. And even that desire to cling is…strange. She’s used to being alone, when did she start needing someone to hold onto?

James glances down at her, a sidelong look.

“Did you hear about Maria?”

_It’s a question of trust and complications._

And that simply, her temper is raw once again.

“I was with two of the Dora Milaje when Nakia came in with the news.”

_Your friend has been secretly conniving with Okoye j’Kuwali to form a moiety marriage with T’Challa and N’Kechi j’Kuwali!_

Not for nothing is Nakia known as the hothead of the Dora Milaje, and there was a moment when Natasha was ready to upend the table to give herself a defensive position. Frankly, she would have preferred a fight to the exclamations and protests and accusations of collusion and colonisation that followed – not only from Nakia, but from Aneka and Ayo.

She still doesn’t quite remember her answers, or how she extricated herself from the conversation. The world went blurry at the edges and sharp in the centre of her vision, like a high-stakes mission going wrong and needing sorting out. When normal resumed, she was standing outside Maria’s door, listening to the  automated guestkeeper tell her that Ms. Hill wasn’t there and that Ms. Romanoff wasn’t authorised to know of Ms. Hill’s location in the greater palace.

 _Natasha_ wasn’t _authorised_?

Yes, Natasha’s been busy – infiltrating the Dora Milaje, flirting with T’Challa, working with Bucky – but after everything they’ve been through, to _not be authorised_ to know where Maria is?

“N’Kechi j’Kuwali was there yesterday when I went to see her.” James sounds grim as they step out of the palace ‘guest house’ and onto the deeper shadows of the covered walkway that meanders towards the palace through a series of jungle gardens. “I noted that he wanted her and she stonewalled me. I should have known—”

“Maria’s good at shutting things down when she doesn’t want to face them.” Natasha swallows the lump in her throat as they pass by lush vines and dangling vivid flowers. “And we’re good at letting her. But she’s never wanted—”

The words stutter to a halt as Natasha tries to remember: Did she ever ask?

Only once.

 _I want someone to trust_.

“We were never official,” she says, feeling it a weak defence. “Our work... Her position...”

Natasha had thought that they were comfortable: friends and trusted lovers when desire arose. And yet after S.H.I.E.L.D went down, so did the relationship – at least the sexual part of it. She’d been so busy trying to find the shadows of her past – trying to find James, and Maria had been so busy with both the Avengers and Stark Industries, travelling here there and everywhere, including Wakanda...

Wakanda, where Maria had met Okoye j’Kuwali, where T’Challa had found something to admire and trust in her – enough to be willing to risk the politics involved in taking a non-Wakandan into his _sedoretu_.

“Maybe she _did_ want,” James says, an odd note in his voice as they reach the end of the walkway. “Maybe she just never said.”

At first Natasha thinks the words are a judgement on her, and the only thing that keeps her from tensing in hurt and shock is her training. Then she sees his face as they step into the lighted corridors of the palace, and she realises this isn’t about her and Maria.

So is he the person who wants and never said? Or is Steve?

Once, she would have asked, seeing it as her right to do so. Today, she doesn’t feel like opening someone else’s wounds as well as her own.

“What were you seeing Maria about yesterday?”

He lets the door slip closed behind them with a soft click, closing them into the corridors of the palace. “Leaving Wakanda. I thought I’d go with her for a while. See how she does what she does, keep an eye out for her, keep her company.”

Natasha just assumed that Maria would be leaving alone. She assumed because that’s always been the way they’ve operated – two women, solitary and yet connected, friends and trusted and occasionally lovers...

“And she said?”

“She said I could.”

“That’s new.” Natasha wonders, if she’d asked, would the answer have been yes, also? “Maria usually runs alone…”

“She’s been _trained_ to do it alone.” James’ voice is gentle, even as he corrects her. “You both have. And that’s because neither of you had anyone else you could trust.”

Understanding shivers down her spine – _someone to trust, someone to trust me._ As rare a find for Natasha Romanoff as for Maria Hill. And Maria had chosen to trust Natasha – just as Natasha had chosen to trust Maria. And so long as there wasn’t anyone else that Maria would rather choose, Natasha had been content to be the default.

She doesn’t want to be the default anymore. Only it’s too late now: Maria’s choosing someone else.

Her thoughts are still in turmoil when one of the aides T’Challa assigned to help them around the palace approaches them with brisk steps. “If you will come with me, his Majesty’s dinner is taking place in the westward galleries..”

They fall silent as they follow him through a series of back routes through the palace, avoiding the busier corridors, slipping through passageways and empty galleries.

Not for the first time Natasha wonders if the secrecy is worth it. In moving them through these routes, T’Challa may be hiding them from the bulk of Wakandan society, but he’s also giving two known spies a guided tour of the back alleys of the Wakandan palace. Then again, if his choice is between pissing off the UN and having the world beating down his door for harbouring fugitives, and giving two people he may or may not be able to trust in future a look at his living space, maybe they’re the better option.

Although that’s got to be the first time anyone’s listed the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier as the lesser evil.

As they approach the gallery, she can hear music – the liquid ripple of Wakandan lyres playing harmonies that Natasha can only identify as ‘African music’ with no more region-specific indicators to her untrained ear. Voices rise and fall in conversation and laughter, and she automatically listens for the ‘tone’ of the party.

There’s a definite edge to the night. Clearly the news about the king’s _sedoretu_ has made the assembly and not everyone is pleased about it.

_Maria, what have you done? Do you even know what you’re doing?_

James leans over. “Easy, now,” his tone is light and his voice soft but warning lurks beneath. “You’re digging holes in my arm.”

Natasha loosens her grip. “Sorry.”

He gives her a sideways look. “I’m not mentioning it for my sake.”

Her eyes rise to meet his, her breath catching in her throat. He’s not smiling – not exactly. A flush rides high on his cheeks, over grey-blue eyes that are surprisingly self-conscious, and the look in them—

A cough from the aide at the door leading into the hall interrupts whatever is churning in Natasha’s stomach right now. Beyond him, the open door shows a room gleaming and glittering with jewels and fine clothing – and filled with familiar faces, from the Dora Milaje to T’Challa’s Privy Council, from T’Challa’s easy smile beside N’Kechi j’Kuwali’s saturnine expression, to Steve’s fixed and polite one over Sharon’s shoulder.

Steve’s gaze is sliding across the room, an instinctive cataloguing of everyone and everything there – a soldier’s habit as much as an assassin’s – but as James and Natasha step out into the brief falter of conversation, his gaze draws to them, like smoke to the open sky.

“Goddammit, Steve,” James mutters. “Don’t you _dare_ look at me like that—”

“Natasha,” T’Challa comes to meet them, smiling and every inch the king. “Barnes.”

Natasha lets him take her hand and waits until he’s lifted it to his lips. “You’re poaching, T’Challa.”

It’s a fractional hesitation, just one split second when he pauses before straightening, his shoulders back, his gaze beneath the long, dark lashes challenging as he lets go of her hand. “If you had staked a true claim, then Maria would have refused outright.”

Natasha looks sharply at him. “You mean she _refused_ —”

Steve comes up with Sharon on his arm. T’Challa gives them an acknowledging nod but addresses Natasha. “Let us say, rather, that she has not yet accepted.”

The rising tone of the voices by the main door causes them all to turn to look.

Beside Okoye j’Kuwali, Maria surveys the gathering with the cool dispassion that carried her through international intelligence and world security. Clad in a Wakandan-style dress of bright scarlet with Wakandan silver dripping from her earlobes and her hair braided in a pattern that matches the tattoos on Okoye's scalp, Maria looks every part the fourth member of a Wakandan royal _sedoretu_ – the King’s ‘sister-wife’. But the expression is pure Deputy-Director of S.H.I.E.L.D – the ‘Ice Bitch’ as she was named by the STRIKE teams - ruthless and uncompromising, nothing politic about it.

Heads turn and tongues wag. Natasha’s aware of a stir among several of the Dora Milaje – like someone is about to storm over and cause a scene – but it dies down, restrained. Sharon comments on the memo that she and Steve must have missed about the dress code being Wakandan garb, but the words are distant. Bucky’s answer is no clearer, only the calm and edged tone of his reply reaching her.

All her attention is on Maria – on the lifted chin and the high flush across the cheekbones, on the tense shoulders and the careful expression.

Then Maria looks around the room, and her gaze falls on Natasha. And Natasha trembles with the desire to walk over there and punch Maria’s lights out – or shake her wildly, or kiss her senseless – something, _anything_ – to break that distant, stranger’s mask and bring back the woman whose shoulders bowed over a mission where agents were lost, whose mouth tightened when someone dismissed her skill and capability yet again, who would fall asleep moments after her head hit the pillow, or rouse slowly in the morning to Natasha’s fingers stroking her, Natasha’s mouth on her skin…

Lips press together as pale cheeks colour, and Maria’s eyes narrow as her chin lifts in defiance. For a moment here’s nobody else in the room, only them—

T’Challa murmurs an apology, and crosses the room to his mother, giving the newly-arrived pair a solemn nod of understanding. And Natasha’s fingers curl into fists as Okoye touches Maria’s arm, dark fingers lingering over pale flesh, and Maria breaks their locked gazes and turns to Okoye, her expression almost relieved.

They move – not towards T’Challa and the woman who must be the Lady Ramonda – but towards a group clustered around a young woman whose smile is an echo of her royal brother’s—

“I guess it’s true then,” Sharon is saying, with a note of satisfaction that instantly raises Natasha’s hackles. “Good for her.”

“How’s that?” James asks.

Sharon blinks, surprised at the question. “With Wakandan royal support behind her, she—”

“It’s not ‘Wakandan royal support’,” Natasha says sharply. “It’s a _marriage_!”

Sharon blinks, evidently surprised by Natasha’s ferocity. “And it’s a good one in practical terms – even if she has to share. But all I’m saying is that with a base in Wakanda—”

“It won’t work.” Steve is polite, but flat. “Maria doesn’t—That’s not how she operates – out in the open. It’s not what she’s ever wanted.”

“And you know so well what she wants?”

Sharon’s query is light and without accusation, but Steve hesitates over the answer.

“She’ll be the odd one out,” Natasha interposes. “A white woman in the king’s intimate circle? It’ll be the visual representation of everything that’s wrong with the world to the Wakandan traditionalists.”

It was why Natasha had only flirted with T’Challa. He owed his Dora Milaje a duty, and while Natasha enjoyed the teasing, she didn’t want to deal with the consequences – political or social – that might follow a bedding.

“It’ll be a red rag to the white nationalists back home,” Steve added, with grim certainty.

“I can only guess what Hill wants, but I know what she _doesn’t_ want.” James’ expression is flat, his mouth thin. “She doesn’t want to do it alone. But she’s the odd one out here. And the whole world is going to latch onto that.”

Sharon looks around at them, her expression somewhere between amused and irritated. “So I’m alone in thinking this is a good thing for her?”

Steve doesn’t answer her, merely noting, “T’Challa’s coming.”

If T’Challa guesses the direction of their conversation, he doesn’t comment on it. Instead he brings the offer of an introduction to his sister who has some small interest in James’ arm – apparently she had significant input into the development of the neural interface. Since Sharon and Steve have already made their courtesies to Princess Shuri, Sharon suggests they take a turn about the room and be friendly rather than monopolise the Princess a second time.

Natasha can’t say she regrets Sharon taking Steve off to speak with some of the Wakandan courtiers. She doesn’t care to listen to Sharon go on about how this is a good move for Maria – what does she know about Maria but what Maria allows her to?

If it comes to that, what does Natasha know about Maria but what Maria allows?

They meet the Princess Shuri, who shows herself to be not only an avid technologist but also a budding politician as she neatly sidesteps the question of her brother’s marital choices by taking such an avid interest in James’ replacement arm that it eventually requires an advisor to remind her that it’s not courteous to monopolise the guests.

But any escape from the politics of Wakandan is temporary as the various members of Privy Council and court descend upon them with accusations and demands and questions that neither of them can answer, nor even care to try.

The night passes in a blur of conversation and canapes and champagne.

For the trained spy that she is, Natasha remembers very little of it.

But she remembers the balcony.

She remembers because Maria steps outside without either Okoye or N’Kechi, with nobody noticing – as much of a shadow as she’s ever been – and Natasha follows. She remembers because she slips out without even a word to James, and he doesn’t try to stop her – nor should he.

This has nothing to do with him – this is about her and Maria.

It’s warmer outside, and a little sticky in the heat. Natasha barely notices, her attention on the woman who stands at the carved balustrade with the city laid out before her, her pose subtly braced as though ready for an argument.

“Hoping for a quiet moment?”

“I guess I’m going to be frustrated on that point.”

“You’re certainly not going to get many quiet moments as the sister-wife of the King of Wakanda.” Natasha draws alongside and watches Maria’s gaze drop to her hands. The question nearly bursts out of her. “Why?”

Maria’s lashes lift and she looks at Natasha. “Rebuilding world security is tiring. S.H.I.E.L.D had sixty years to anchor itself, and the new S.H.I.E.L.D can’t focus on a global scale, so it’s just the Avengers Initiative for the moment. And Tony and Steve more or less tore that apart.”

“You want sanctuary.”

“I want somewhere to sort out the pieces. Take stock and get my head around everything that’s going on.” Maria’s gaze drifts out to the gleaming shadows of the city. “It’ll be easier with the economic and political power of Wakanda behind me.”

“And marriage is the price you’re willing to pay for world security?”

When Maria’s gaze comes back to her, there’s something like regret in it. “Marriage would be the bonus.”

The night is warm, but sudden cold wraps itself around Natasha’s throat.

She’s not up against Okoye and N’Kechi j’Kuwali, or even a Royal _sedoretu_ ; she’s up against the world, its safety and security as represented by the significant resources of Wakanda, made accessible through T’Challa’s power and influence.

Outclassed, outcast, and ousted; what’s a mere lover to _that,_ even if the lover in question is the Black Widow?

Maria is looking at her, her expression wary, as though waiting to see what Natasha will do. As though there’s anything Natasha _can_ do apart from make sure her voice is calm, cool, and remote and that she’s not showing the emptiness that scrapes at her insides with icy fingers.

“So you’ve got it all worked out, then.”

“Hardly all. But it’s something to start with. Somewhere to go.”

_Someone to trust._

“Will they? Trust you, I mean.”

There’s a moment when Maria looks uncertain, although that might just be the shift of shadows across her face as a warm breeze rustles the trees. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Maria’s voice trembles, the first sign of uncertainty that Natasha’s seen. She turns, about to touch Maria on the shoulder, cold fingers against warm, bare skin. She’s prepared to tell Maria she doesn’t have to do this—

There’s a step on the balcony behind them.

“Maria?”

They both turn to look at the figure standing in the doorway, backlit by the glow of the lights inside.  And Okoye j’Kuwali smiles at Natasha, a flash of white teeth that feels like a challenge against the rawness of Natasha’s soul. “Ms. Romanoff.”

“Sera Okoye.” _Congratulations on your coup._ Natasha swallows the words down. Civility she can manage, but congratulations? Never.

Okoye is enough of a politician to see this, and simply looks to Maria. “Maria, the Lady Ramonda has requested our presence.”

“Now?”

“As soon as is convenient.”

“So, now.” Maria looks at Natasha and hesitates, as though she wants to say something more. An apology? A request? A question?

Caught between hope and terror, Natasha waits as Maria seems to consider the wisdom of whatever’s on her mind. Then Okoye lifts an arm in a gesture that’s both inviting and proprietary and Maria’s eyes shift beyond Natasha to the woman she’ll take as wife in a Wakandan royal _sedoretu_ , and her gaze flickers in brief apology before she allows herself to be herded inside without looking back.

Natasha makes herself watch them go inside, her nails digging crescents into her palms that she doesn’t feel until she forces her fingers to uncurl.

Then it stings.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve and Natalia are out on the balcony arguing.

Bucky can tell they’re arguing because Natalia’s arms are folded, and her body and face are turned away from Steve, the rigid line of her shoulders beneath the ponytail suggesting rebellion—

_She is willful, that one._

_It was a mistake to take a moiety girl._

_Yet is it not her will that will serve best when moulded into shape, bent to submission?_

And Steve leans in, every inch of his slight frame vibrating with pride and anger as he gestures back at the room—

_You could just walk away from the fight, Steve._

_No, I couldn’t._

_No, I guess you can’t._

“Should we intervene?”

The ghosts of the slender, belligerent girl and the skinny, frustrated youth they once were fade, and startled, Bucky glances over at Carter. She approached hesitantly, her footsteps more than a little wary. While they’ve talked and chatted some, they’re not friends, and they both know it. She doesn’t quite trust him with Steve – she doesn’t quite trust the Winter Soldier, either. But her interest in Steve is sufficient to keep her polite as she watches the scene playing out on the balcony.

“They need to have it out between them.”

She snorts softly. “It looks like it’s about thirty seconds from coming to blows.”

Bucky nearly asks if she’s seeing the same thing he is, if she knows anything about the pair on the balcony, but he bites back the words. Whatever his own personal issues with Sharon Carter, she’s become Steve’s choice, and he will be civil even when he disagrees with her.

But he’s seeing the hurt in both of them: in Natalia’s closed-in body, in the tight line of Steve’s jaw as Natalia’s replies strike home. Steve’s hands twitch, as though about to close into fists – the flight or fight instinct when he’s taken an emotional wound.

 _Pride and hurt,_ Bucky thinks as Carter starts for the door. “I’m going out there—”

“No. Don’t—” He grabs for her shoulder, and stifles the pang as she flinches beneath the prosthetic hand before he lets her go. “If they start fighting, it’s better if I go out.”

Bucky doesn’t think it’s likely that either of them will throw a punch. Physicality isn’t how either of them get angry, and certainly not with each other. Still, he has a feeling that this is _personal_ , and the last thing either of them need or want is for Carter to witness it.

As he steps out into the muggy air, Steve is speaking. “...looking for sanctuary, she wouldn’t have found it with us either.”

“Maybe not with _you_.”

Steve tenses like Natalia struck him a physical blow. His shoulders heave once, twice, before his mouth firms and his expression hardens. “No,” he agrees, lowering his eyes. “Not with me.”

Yes, Bucky thinks, it’s personal in ways that neither of them would want Sharon to witness. So it’s just as well that he came out to interrupt.

He clears his throat, although they already know he’s there. “This may not be the place to have this argument.”

“It’s not.” Natalia stares out into the night. “But we’re done here, anyway.”

Steve’s head comes up slowly. He stares at her like he’s never seen her before. Then his mouth tightens and he sets his shoulders as he strides for the door. “Yeah, we’re done.”

Bucky shifts his weight, prepared to move to intercept him – fight or not, they shouldn’t leave it like this. The pain in Steve is as palpable as a plea and Bucky’s no more immune to it than anyone else on this goddamned planet – maybe less. Meanwhile, Natalia stands with her chin high and her lips tight, her head turned away. Yes, she’s won her war, but her victory is ashes.

“Steve?” Sharon’s query is light and clear and does nothing to dispel the tension from the air. “Is everything okay?”

Steve rests his hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “We were just coming inside. Right, Buck?”

“Actually,” Bucky says quietly, “I think I’ll stay out here for a bit.”

The grip tightens, then drops from his shoulder. Steve shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

Sharon follows him, helpless steel to Steve’s unstoppable magnetism.

Bucky feels the tug of it, but the slender solitary figure pulls him harder right now, proud shoulders stiff and tense in the warm night. She might have had the last word, but Steve drew blood, too.

So he rests his hands beside hers on the railing and stares off into the darkness. “I guess that went well.”

She laughs – a bitter spurt of something that’s not quite amusement. “If you say so.” A few seconds pass before she asks, “Why didn’t you go with him?”

There are a lot of things he could say. That the hand that gripped his shoulder felt disturbingly possessive at a time when Bucky needs to break the connection between them. That he objected to the way Steve intended to isolate Natalia, leaving her out on the balcony alone. That he felt more drawn to Natalia as she faced the loss of a core certainty than he did to Steve facing the hurt of whatever wound Natalia inflicted on him.

He simply says, “You needed me more.”

“I needed you more?”

Bucky looks at her. “How many people have you watched walk away over the years?”

Her smile drops away like the side of a mountain. “Enough.”

“How many people have walked away from Steve over the years?”

Bitter irony twists her mouth. “Maria did.”

Something that none of them need reminding of at this moment. “You did when you sided with Stark over the Accords.” Bucky stifles the pang that comes when he thinks of Howard, of Howard’s wife – it wasn’t his will, maybe, but he still killed them. “Stark did.”

“That’s different. Steve walked away from Tony.”

“So it’s a small club.” Bucky shrugs. “Steve’s always had someone backing him up – someone who was there. Peggy. The Howling Commandoes. The Avengers.”

“You.” At his frown, she smiles faintly. “ _Even when I had no-one else, I had Bucky._ ”

That’s hard to hear, knowing that he’s got to disengage and step away. But Bucky puts it away for later. “You’ve gone it alone because you had to – you and Maria both. I’m saying you don’t always have to.”

Natalia stares at him. Then she laughs, short and light and careful – the laugh of a woman who’s been disappointed too many times and can’t ride the roller-coaster of hope only to be dumped again. “That’s quite an offer to someone you barely know, James.”

“I remembered you, even when I wasn’t supposed to,” he reminds her.

“So we have a connection?”

The mockery stings, but he keeps his voice level. “We have a connection anyway thanks to our pasts with the Red Room and each other. I’m saying that I’m here if you want me.”

“If I want you, or if I _want_ you?”

Bucky can’t tell which she’d prefer – not that it matters. What draws him to her is not their past history or present desire, but the knowledge that here is a woman who comes as close as any at being able to kill him, who knows what he is and what he was and what he could be, and yet who doesn’t flinch away from him, and isn’t afraid to be alone with him.

“Either or both. It’s up to you.”

She stares at him for a long moment. “Up to _me_?”

“It’s your choice,” he says quietly. “It will always be your choice.”

A beat of her heart, his heart, and she takes a deep breath and steps in close. Her fingers brush over his cheek, cool tips against warm skin, and her other hand skims up his bare arm, stirring the hair on his forearms, stirring desire.

Her hand comes around his neck pulling him down. And Bucky goes without hesitation.

The first moment is tentative, uncertain, and it feels like a first kiss, trying to work out where noses and lips and chins and teeth fit, familiar and unfamiliar—

_...white light, hot water, firm flesh, and the familiar feel and sense of Steve in an unfamiliar mouth..._

But, no, Natalia’s nothing like Steve, smaller and more contained, ferocious fire in a petite package. She angles her head like _that_ , and it all clicks. Bucky remembers this – the fierce, deep nips of her mouth, the fingers that flex on his shoulders, the curve of her waist in the crook of his arm...

Her lashes flutter open as he presses his forehead against hers, and her fingers stroke his lips.

“Let’s continue this discussion somewhere a little more private,” she murmurs.

They don’t exactly sneak out of the party, but they don’t go back inside. Instead, a slow and circuitous route through the palace takes them to Natalia’s quarters, and a slow and circuitous route takes them from laughing as they climb over her balcony railing to breathless in her bed.

Afterwards, Natalia drowses while Bucky watches her with his head propped up on his arm, his prosthetic hand resting between them, the fingers twitching with the desire to brush back a loose strand of hair that’s fallen over her face. She didn’t flinch from his touch once. Not when he cupped her breast in a metal palm, not when he slid a chilly finger over her nub, not even when his fingers bit into her hip as she rode them to exhaustion.

She’s not afraid of him.

Not then when they made love, not now when she’s fast asleep.

Almost fast asleep.

“ _Sasha_?”

“ _I’m here_ ,” he murmurs in Russian. “ _Sleep._ ”

He doesn’t remember ‘Sasha’, not clearly. And she was...Elena? Maybe? Bucky brushes a hand over her hair. It doesn’t matter in the end. The names they called each other didn’t change who they were, how they related to each other – as operatives, as people, as man and woman.

She trusts him.

How many people can Bucky say trusts him in their sleep?

Natalia. Steve, probably. And Maria.

Maria...

More than Steve or Natalia, Bucky feels the weight of Maria’s trust in him. Perhaps it was pragmatic to deprogram the Winter Soldier, but nobody said she had to treat him like a person who mattered afterwards. _I’m more worried about you snoring._

But he pities her.

She’s an intelligence operative who had to recalibrate everything she knew, an ‘ordinary’ person who dealt with the Avengers both individually and as a group, and a woman who held Steve’s attention for nearly a year. And having been offered _sedoretu_ marriage to the king of Wakanda...well, who could blame her for taking that opportunity?

But he saw the hard truth of things playing out tonight as Maria made her way through the core of Wakandan royal society. She won’t get what she wants as T’Challa’s sister-wife, won’t find it in N’Kechi’s arms, nor in Okoye’s. _I’m not a refuge, you know._ There’s too much suspicion, too much distrust, and whatever she’s previously endured, what’s coming will surely be a thousand times worse in not only the Wakandan national spotlight, but also on the international stage.

As he slips into sleep, Bucky wonders if she’ll see it before it’s too late to get out.

The nightmares that initially plagued him after his deprogramming are now merely occasional, and he doesn’t usually remember his dreams. Tonight, though, he dreams of a home – of laughter and kindness, Steve’s easy smile, and two women who aren’t afraid of who and what he is.

He wakes with his face smushed into Natalia’s side, her arm resting on the pillow above his head.

“You curled into me like I was a teddy bear.”

A smile curves his mouth but he doesn’t move. “I haven’t had a teddy bear in decades.”

“Nearly a century, perhaps?” She slides an arm over his metal shoulder, fingertips stimulating the ‘nerve’ sensors that provide feedback to his brain, simulating sensation. “Antiquated thing that you are.”

“Hey, I may be antiquated, but I was satisfactory enough last night.” He pauses, remembering the humiliating over-eagerness of his body that first time. “Okay, so, maybe the second time...”

Natalia laughs. “I won’t hold it against you.”

He slides his hand over her breasts, brushing casually over her nipples, then down over her belly, fingertips trailing against soft skin, across strong muscle, down to the neatly trimmed triangle between her thighs. “Then you’ll let me reprise?”

She parts her legs to give him better access, then frowns and closes her legs, her knee nudging his wrist away. “Not that hand.”

At first, he doesn’t get it. Then, when he does, heat rushes him like a drug.

He gets to his knees, shoving back the sheets so he can move over her, and kneel-walks between her parted legs to her other side, then rests his prosthetic hand on her knee, the metal fingertips resting lightly on the warm skin of her thigh, watching her face to measure her reactions.

“You know what this means.”

“I know it’s not where I want that hand.”

Bucky watches as her tongue peeps between her teeth as he slides his hand slowly up her thigh. Then grins as she glares when he slides it down the other without touching her where she wants. “You tease.”

“Ah, Natalia, I haven’t even started...”

He teases her for a while, using hard and soft, cold and warm to play with her senses. He trails his mouth wetly over her skin, and revels in the thrilled quiver of her flesh at the touch of metal fingers in sensitive places. He takes her instructions on what works for her and his cock aches fit to burst as she writhes and begs and pleads, licks her lips and promises filthy, filthy things while he uses his body and his mouth and his hands – both of them – to bring her to a lengthy, humming orgasm.

Watching her, afterwards, Bucky lingers in the intimate moment, ignoring the erection throbbing for his attention. He feels...alive.

When Natalia finally opens her lashes, she surveys him, her gaze lingering on the swell of his cock. “Got a small problem there, James?”

“You call _this_ small?”

His mock-offence is rewarded with her laugh and her hand around him. A hot spear of anticipation and desire crackles along his nerves as she strokes him. “Ah, the male ego...”

“That’s not my ego you’re handling...”

She grins – a small glitter of eyes and teeth, and leans in to nip his throat – oh, God, _teeth –_ as Bucky reaches up to cup her head—

Something dings, a discreet bell.

Bucky nearly doesn’t hear it, but Natalia hesitates, then shrugs. “They can wait.”

“ _Ms. Maria Hill is requesting entry._ ”

Bucky watches the conflicts flit across Natalia’s face – shock, hurt, anger, resentment – and takes a deep breath. Maria wouldn’t be here at this hour if it wasn’t important.

“You go see what Maria wants,” he tells her as he climbs out of the bed. “I’ll deal with this myself.”

“James...”

He points at the door. “Go.”

Her eyes follow him as he walks to the bathroom, and maybe he blushes a little, knowing his erection is bobbing ridiculously, and maybe he struts a little, knowing she’s watching him. How long has it been since a woman admired him?

As he pulls the bathroom door shut behind him, he hears the soft whuff of sheets being tossed aside and smiles to himself. Then he stares at his reflection in the mirror.

The man who looks back at him may still be the Winter Soldier – there’s too much metal and muscle for him to be anything but a weapon – but there’s a tan down his body, nail marks on his shoulders, an already-fading bite-mark on his throat, and a ruddy, aching erection that’s just starting to realise it’s been cockblocked.

He’s not just a machine, a _thing_ ; he’s James Buchanan Barnes, and he’s a _man_.

The rush of pleasure is a little more vicious than desire, a little more edgy than can be taken off with a quick jerk off in the shower. So Bucky goes back out to the bedroom and gathers up his clothes from last night, half-listening to the conversation outside – Natalia’s cold and cutting words, Maria’s subdued tones.

Maria, subdued?

Bucky rethinks his plan to go out over the balcony, quietly.

He heads for the outer room.

“... _before_ you got into a relationship with T’Challa’s lover and one of his Dora Milaje!”

“And _you’ve_ never made a bad— _Barnes_?”

Between her stunned expression and Natalia’s frowning one, Bucky thinks he should have gone out over the balcony. Too late now. He crosses to Natalia and kisses her – swift and soft. “You’re busy right now, so I’ll be back.”

“You’d better,” she murmurs back. “I owe you.”

“Yes, you do.”

Bucky looks to Maria, still sitting in last night’s finery, stiff and shamefaced. “I guess you don’t know if you’re staying here in Wakanda or not. But if you need me, I’ll be there – for you or world security.”

She swallows and her cheeks go pink, but she doesn’t look away as most people would, even though her eyes are too-bright with what she’d never admit were tears. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He hesitates before crossing the room to kiss her on the forehead. She doesn’t gut him with the knife she probably has hidden on her person. He thinks that’s a victory of sorts. “Try not to kill each other, okay?”

He can hear the roll of her eyes. Natalia makes a distinctly rude noise.

Bucky leaves them to it.

He walks through the quiet corridors of the guest hall to his room, and changes out of his evening wear and into workout clothing. The guest gym will be empty at this time and he’ll go a round on the punching bag—

The punching bag is already in use, Steve’s hair darkened with sweat, his tee-shirt damp at the armpits; he’s been at it for a while. And Bucky stands at the door for a moment, saying nothing, regretting much.

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate what Steve’s done for him. There’s a lot to be grateful for: from not only siding with him against the UN, the CIA, and Howard’s son, to believing there was more in him than just the Winter Soldier. But they’re not sixteen anymore, not those two Brooklyn boys making promises to each other that they’ll never have the chance to keep. Too much has happened to them and between them – HYDRA and Howard’s death and Steve’s heroism and Sharon Carter. This is a new world, and there’s no place for the old dream of them together with their wives and their lives and their love.

Bucky’s not even entirely sure he wants Steve like that anymore.

Maybe it’s time to let go.

“You weren’t in Maria’s—your rooms last night.” Steve has paused in his punching, fists resting lightly on the bag. His head is half-turned, enough that Bucky can see the tension in his jaw, the thinned mouth.

All Bucky can think to say is, “Is this an interrogation?”

“I went looking for you – you vanished, and Nat wasn’t answering.”

“Yeah. Think about that for a moment.”

There’s a moment, then Steve turns around. “You and Nat?”

His expression isn’t quite incredulous, but the disbelief stings and this morning Bucky isn’t in a mood to ease Steve into it. He might have the right to protest if it had been a Morning man that Bucky slept with, but Natalia is no more cheating than Sharon Carter is.

“It’s not like it was N’Kechi j’Kuwali.” Then Bucky realises that mentioning the Morning man who may or may not be Maria’s newest lover is probably not the wisest move. Steve tenses, his hands half-twitching into fists. He shoves past that conversational and emotional pit. “So whose room were _you_ in last night?”

“My own. Without Sharon,” Steve adds.

Bucky forces himself to smile, although there’s a tightness in his temples, a buzzing pressure in his chest. “You don’t need my permission, Steve. You’re not cheating.”

Only he is, in a way, because Steve sleeping with a woman who can’t accept Bucky is a betrayal of the promise they made to each other all those years ago.

“Sharon’s not moiety, she wasn’t raised that way—”

Steve’s voice has a defensive, almost pleading note, but Bucky doesn’t want to hear excuses.

He can’t let himself listen to the reasons, because if he sees the slender, skinny guy he promised forever to a lifetime ago, it’ll all come crashing down. And they’re not those boys anymore, not the innocent kids they were in a New York that’s so much further than half a world away, nor even the men who believed in the rightness of the war they fought. They need to move on, and they can’t so long as they’re bound by the promises they made in another time and another place when they were other people.

Bucky knows that Steve will never cut the cord between them. It’s up to him.

He interrupts.

“Steve.” Is there anything more daunting than Steve’s full and undivided attention? Probably not. Bucky sucks in a long, shaky breath, then lets it out. “I’ve been thinking...it’s been eighty years. The world’s changed – _we’ve_ changed. And that promise we made...” He shrugs and thinks it might even be casual enough to fool Steve. “I want out.”

Steve turns around fully then, disbelief written across his face, stamped into the lines of his body as his arms fall to his sides. “Bucky?”

Steve shattered the framework of Bucky’s mind once before by using his name, back when Bucky had forgotten he’d even had a name. Now, Bucky needs to break them both free of the holding pattern they’re in – a promise with marginal hope of follow through, a captivity without cease.

Bucky regrets what might have been – he’ll always regret it – but he needs to be free. They both do.

_Who’s Bucky?_

He’s James Buchanan Barnes, and this is the first morning of the rest of his life.

“I want out, Steve. This is the end of the line.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully November will bring a great deal more writing and we'll get through the 2nd half of this much faster than we have the 1st!

Steve hears the words, but at first they have no meaning.

When they do—

“What the hell, Buck?”

“This is the end of the line. I want out.” There’s no waver in the voice, no hesitation. All in, all out – that was always Bucky. 

“Just like that?”

“Is there any other way that this is going to end? Christ, Steve, look at us! You’re the world’s most recognised hero, and I’m the world’s most wanted criminal, and we’re standing under another guy’s roof on his ancestral lands, entirely dependent on his generosity. If he turfed us out tomorrow, what would we even do? What kind of a home could we even have? We’ve got nothing to offer a couple of women, if we could even find some who’d be willing to share us with each other – and Carter sure won’t.”

The words, _she’s not moiety, give her time,_ hover on Steve’s lips before he swallows them. He’s known for the last few days that Sharon won’t accept Bucky as his lover. He just hasn’t wanted to consider the choice he’ll have to make when he acknowledged it.

Only now Bucky’s made the choice for him.

_The end of the line_ .

“Bucky, it doesn’t have to end like this. We can still salvage—”

But there Steve stops.

_Maybe we can salvage what’s left…_

_We’re not salvaging anything,_ Steve hears himself tell Fury, with neither remorse nor sympathy.  _We’re taking down S.H.I.E.L.D._

The irony strikes like a physical blow, like the sucker punch of realisation as the Triskelion elevator filled up with men he knew, men he’d worked alongside, men he’d trusted – and every single one of them HYDRA. In this moment, Steve feels every part of him that physically hurts, from the throbbing pulse at his temple to the burning ache in his knuckles.

Bucky’s taking it all down.

Unaware of Steve’s revelation, Bucky’s speaking. “Let’s face it. We died, the war ended, Peggy moved on and married, and she and the guys got to live out their lives in contentment.” The twist of his mouth is familiar and haunting. “We won’t have that; it’s not in our future. It’s time we accept we missed that train and move on.”

“Move on?” The throb of his pulse surges to a tightness in his chest, a heat beneath his breastbone. “Move on to _what_ , exactly?”

The carelessness of Bucky’s shrug is almost an insult. “Whatever you want.”

There’s no S.H.I.E.L.D anymore, no Avengers. Steve’s been on the move through Europe ever since the Accords, keeping a low profile and trying to find where he fits in a world where he’s no longer Captain America. After four months of missed connections, he finally met up with Sharon and was working on a relationship with her just as the news came that Maria and the Wakandans had a way to deprogram Bucky. Which brought him to Wakanda and the last six weeks.

And now Bucky’s leaving him?

Like  _hell_ .

“I want _you_.” Steve says and steps into Bucky’s space, reaching out, trusting that he won’t be pushed away, that whatever Bucky says, there’s a part of him that remembers _this_...

It’s been seventy years, but Bucky’s mouth still opens under his. He still kisses like he’s starving, tongue flicking across Steve’s lips, teeth nipping at Steve’s tongue. The long, lean body still fits against Steve, one hand cupping Steve’s nape, the other gripping his jaw. That the hand that cups his jaw might be cold metal instead of warm flesh doesn’t matter – it’s still Bucky.

Bucky’s waist under Steve’s arm, his hips bumping with Steve’s as he takes a step forward and throws them off-balance. They stumble down to the mats, Steve landing hard on his knee – luckily between Bucky’s thighs rather than in his balls. He grunts once then pushes Bucky down to the floor, balancing on one elbow so his mouth can find Bucky’s again as his hand reaches for the waistband of Bucky’s tracksuit pants.

There’s no moving on from  _this_ – the firmness of the hand sliding up the back of his skull as he gets his teeth in the long, strong throat, the hardness of the body pressing back against his, the eagerness of the cock that swells under his hand as he cups it, wraps his fingers around it, and pumps—

Bucky makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a moan in Steve’s mouth, grunts once, then tenses, abruptly pulling away. Dizzy and breathless, the hot rhythm broken, it takes Steve a moment to follow Bucky’s startled and shamed gaze to the door where Sharon is standing, her arms folded across her chest, her expression stony.

Cold shock shatters hot desire, and Steve rolls off Bucky and climbs to his feet, his half-erect dick aching, his face and neck hot. His thoughts are fuzzy and his mouth dry.

Tears gleam in Sharon’s eyes as she looks from him to Bucky and back to him, her expression pinched and tight.

“Were you planning to shut the door at any point?” 

“Sharon—”

Steve breaks off as she lifts her hand to cut him off. The truth is that doesn’t know what he’s going to say – if there’s even anything  _to_ say after this. He didn’t even think of her once Bucky announced he wanted out, any shred of rationality or sense fled. 

Sharon’s looking down at Bucky, still sprawled on the floor. “I’m guessing you don’t plan to let him go, then?”

Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t adjust his pants, doesn’t scrub at the marks Steve left on his jaw and throat. He just lies there, his face carefully expressionless, as he says, “Actually, I just told him  _I_ was letting  _him_ go.” His voice is rough but even, and utterly, completely uncompromising as he adds, “What you just saw was Steve objecting.”

Her face goes sharp and still with betrayal. “Is this true?”

“I—” His defence hovers on his lips, before giving way to the truth. “Yes.”

“So...you were going to fuck him.” The words are crisp, unforgiving, and undeniable. “And our relationship didn’t enter into the equation?”

“No.”

“Because it’s _different_ being with a woman than being with a man, right? According to your _moiety_ and your _sedoretu marriages_.” 

The bitterness in her voice drills into his chest and belly, and Steve feels the sting of it.

“Yes,” he says, quietly. “It’s different according to moiety.”

Bucky gets to his feet, wincing a little. “I don’t think I need to be here for this conversation.” He looks at Steve, his expression troubled. “I’m not holding you to our promise.”

“Bucky—”

“If you want her, take her.” For a moment, the man looking at Steve is a stranger. “Just don’t count me in your plans for the future, Steve. You’re on your own now.”

And he walks out, detouring past Sharon. The door closes behind him, leaving them in an uncomfortable and awkward silence.

“What was the promise?”

“That we’d marry each other in a _sedoretu_ when we were grown and found ourselves Evening and Morning wives.” Steve closes his eyes and bows his head. It feels so long ago now, so distant; like it happened to other people in another life. Which, he supposes, it did. And yet...he’s been clinging to the vestiges of that promise for the last five years, ever since he came out of the ice and realised that the world had changed beyond imagining.

To lose it now...

“I’m curious how I fitted into this promise you made him.” Sharon’s gaze is hard and dark, even through her tears. “Did you expect me to share you, Steve?”

“I...It’s not the same in a moiety relationship.”

“So that’s a yes.”

She makes it sound sordid; which, perhaps, in her eyes, it is. But it’s not sordid to Steve – it’s an entirely different aspect of attraction and love. And Sharon’s inability to compromise, to see things from his perspective stings like the discovery that Peggy moved on and married someone else. Then again, where else did she learn to stand her ground from, but Peggy?

_No, you move._

“All right, yes,” he says, and his voice holds enough passion that her eyes widen. “Yes, I hoped that you and Bucky would get along well enough to fit in! I thought that maybe you would...that we could...”

“Get along like one big happy polygamous family?”

He doesn’t like the sneer in her voice. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not moiety.”

After a brief and stunned silence follows on both their parts. He’s never cast her lack of moiety up to her before, he never realised how much it mattered until now.

“Sharon—”

“No, you’re right. I don’t understand and I’m not moiety.” Sharon’s mouth pinches. “That might be fine for you and Bucky, Steve, but it’s not for me. I’m not going to share you with him, Steve. I won’t be the woman breaking my heart over you while you’re chasing after him. And you will,” she adds as Steve opens his mouth to protest. “Because sooner or later everyone else in your world ends up playing second fiddle to Bucky Barnes, and I’ve got more respect for myself than to let you toy with my heart like it means nothing.”

“Sharon. You don’t mean _nothing_ —”

“I just don’t mean as much as he does.” She folds her arms across her chest. “I can’t live like that, Steve – I _won’t_. If you’re going to keep him, then I’m not staying.”

She looks at him, not quite expectant, but he can feel the potential of the moment. His chest is tight, his whole body tense as the silence between them, pregnant with the possibility that he might tell her, no, it’s a mistake, now that Bucky’s repudiated him, he’s free and he  _does_ want to be with her...

The truth is that he doesn’t.

“Maybe that’s best.” His voice is coming from a long way off. “I’m...I’m sorry I hurt you – that I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be.”

Sharon stares at him, like she can’t believe what she’s hearing, then her mouth tightens. “Okay then.” After a moment she looks away, blinking. Steve winces, wishing he could do more than just apologise, but the truth of the matter is that she’s right. Even with the old promise broken, and Bucky determined to walk away, Steve doesn’t want to be exclusive to Sharon. And in the end, honesty is the best policy.

He hears Sharon take a deep breath, but when she speaks, her voice is clear and edged. “So that’s it, then.”

“Do we just walk away?” 

“That’s how it usually goes.” She makes a soft, bitter noise. “There wasn’t much to begin with.”

“There was potential.”

“For what that’s worth.” Sharon hesitates. “If you—If you need to get in contact with me for any reason, then you can probably do so through Maria.”

That has its own set of pitfalls, none of which Steve is prepared to address right now – maybe ever. He settles for saying, “Same here.”

“Or, I’ll just look for wherever the Winter Soldier was last seen.” As quips go, this one falls flat. “So...I suppose this is it.”

“Yes.” It feels...awkward. Painfully so. “Sharon...” 

Steve starts towards her, thinking he should kiss her, hug her,  _something_ — 

Sharon holds up a hand. “Don’t, Steve. Just...don’t.”

And out she walks, leaving Steve to the sunlight and the punching bag and the bitter taste of regret.

With nothing else to do, nothing else on which to vent his frustrations, Steve goes back to the punching bag, battering his fists against leather and sand even as his thoughts batter inside his skull.

He could call Sharon back – apologise, reassure, repent. But Steve doesn’t want to. What began as a flirtation between neighbors didn’t grow into something that will hold them through good times and bad. And, yes, Steve knew it wasn’t enough when he left Sharon to oversee Bucky’s deprogramming, but he didn’t want to be the one who ended it.

And because he wasn’t honest with her, he’s lost both her and Bucky.

_You’re on your own now._

Steve slams his fist into the bag and watches it jerk as the chain snaps and it thuds to the floor. He stands over it, hands clenched, breathing hard. Everything’s come apart in the last few days – not just Bucky, or Sharon, but  _everything_ . 

He hasn’t felt this empty since he woke from the ice and realised everything he’d known and everyone he’d loved was gone.

He hooks the bag back up again, takes a towel and a drink, and heads back to his rooms to wash and shave because life has to go on, with or without a shattered life and a broken heart.

Steam billows around Steve as he contemplates what happens now. Where does he go and what does he do? Is there anything left now that the Avengers are gone and S.H.I.E.L.D is minimised, that the people he made connections with want nothing to do with him, and the people he thought he would rely on aren’t there anymore?

He thought he knew who he was when he wan’t Captain America – that he still had Bucky – but now Bucky’s disowned him.

_You thinking about getting out?_

_I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I did._

_Ultimate Fighting? Just a great idea off the top of my head..._

And then, when Steve gets out of the shower, there’s a message from Sam on his phone.

_Checking in. All good ‘cept the coffee, which is excellent. How’s it in W with B?_

Steve calls, because he wants to hear Sam’s voice as much as he wants to check in. They agreed to keep regular contact – check-ins, in case things went bad for one of them. He doesn’t intend to tell Sam about everything, but Sam asks questions in his easy, inviting way – cogent ones, pertinent ones, and before Steve knows it, Sam’s winkled most of the situation out and what he hasn’t he’s pretty much guessed.

“So, you say Bucky’s pretty much back to himself?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re thinking about coming out to Turkey rather than sticking with him, and sounding about as cheerful as Eeyore on a bad day, while making really weak jokes about Ultimate Fighting?”

“I don’t sound like Eeyore!”

“Heard yourself lately? Also, you mentioned Sharon was in Wakanda, but she’s not in your plans to come out here. So, if you had a Facebook page, what’s your relationship status right now?”

“Don’t go there, Sam.”

“Right. How’s Nat doing?”

Steve thinks of Nat standing at the balcony last night, furious with him for not ‘keeping hold of Maria’ - as though he could have held onto her when she wanted to go. And then Bucky choosing to stay with her, to spend the night with her, and then repudiating Steve in the morning.

He exhales. “Don’t go there, either.”

“All right, so I’m not asking about Maria at all.” Sam makes a noise like a snort. “Gotta say, though, I’m kind of impressed. You’ve managed some serious hash in six weeks.”

“And you’ve got it all together?”

“That I have. And if I don’t, well you’re not around to see it, are you?”

Steve grins. “So, bestow on me some advice, Sam. Tell me what I should do.”

“You want my advice on what to do?”

“Didn’t I just say that?”

“I’m just checking. Okay.... Go talk to Maria.”

So maybe he doesn’t want Sam’s advice after all... “Go talk to Maria?” Steve repeats, just in case he misheard.

“Look, you want something to get your mind off Bucky, to work out what happens next? Get back into the game. But quietly. Which is why you should talk to Maria.”

Steve hasn’t even touched on Maria’s situation. One more thing he didn’t want to think about and now has to. “She’s getting married.”

“To who?”

“To whom.”

“Whatever. Spill!” 

“T’Challa’s lover and one of his Dora Milaje have convinced her to join them and T’Challa in a _sedoretu_ marriage.” Saying it is like acid in Steve’s throat, no better in daylight than it was last night when arguing the point with Sharon.

“You’re kidding me.” There’s a pause as Sam considers the situation. “Okay. Well...good for her...I guess. How do you feel about it?”

“Are you headshrinking me?”

“No and yes and maybe. I’m saying you should go talk to Maria, because even if she’s settling down in holy matrimony, I can’t see her going homemaker – especially not if she’s marrying T’Challa and his significant others. So make your peace with her choices, and get her to give you something so you’re not sitting on your ass angsting over the fact that your boyfriend broke up with you, and then your girlfriend broke up with you, and your ex-girlfriend is marrying the King of Wakanda.”

Steve lets the breakup remarks pass. “I don’t have an issue with Maria’s choices.”

“You’ll have no problem asking her for work, then.”

They trade a few more quips, and Steve is reminded that Sam can be an insufferable asshole when he puts his mind to it. It’s probably why Steve liked him from the start.

He puts off going to see Maria, though. First he has breakfast, because he’s starving. Then he checks in with Lang in South-East Asia, and Wanda in Europe because it’s the right time of day to speak with them. He manages to avoid talking about where he is and what’s going on, largely because neither of them know precisely where he is anymore than he knows precisely where they are. Meanwhile, Clint is back in the US with his family, and won’t be up for another four hours. Steve leaves him for later, then goes for a walk into the palace, intending to speak with W’Kabi, T’Challa’s security chief.

He doesn’t get very far. He’s barely in the palace when he finds himself waylaid by members of T’Challa’s inner circle. Dora Milaje, councillors, security advisors... So many people are looking for Maria, and in her apparent absence, they’ll latch onto one of the other foreigners to find out what they want to know – exactly what Maria means by this marriage, how she expects to benefit from this, how this situation will affect Wakanda’s standing in the wider world...

Steve can answer none of it, and every question stings.

In the end, he goes to see Maria because if he has to answer on her behalf, then he figures at least he should get to ask the questions himself.

It doesn’t occur to him that Maria may no longer have time for him until he turns the corner into her corridor and finds N’Kechi j’Kuwali walking away from her door.

The air is like a knife, and shreds his lungs. He can’t breathe and his chest hurts, like something dug in under his ribcage and shredded his insides. His vision goes very bright, and very sharp, and very clear, as the other man – the man Maria chose for herself – approaches with no fear of what Steve could do to him. Of what Steve suddenly  _wants_ to do to him.

Daniel Souza was decades dead by the time Steve found out about Peggy’s marriage, a ghost Steve wouldn’t have touched even if he could have: a veteran of the war, from all reports a good husband, a good father, and a good man.

Somehow this is different, a flesh and blood target for the oily wash of jealousy that slicks through Steve’s veins and smears his insides.

“Captain Rogers.”

“Ser j’Kuwali.” Steve hopes his voice is as level as the Wakandan’s as he asks, “Is Maria in?”

“She is not.” J’Kuwali indicates the doorkeeping service. “You may leave a message.”

The ‘permission’ grates.

“I intend to.”

Leaving messages is always awkward, and how much more so when you’re the ex, and her current man is listening? Steve tells Maria he’d like to talk about work when she has time free, and leaves it at that.

“Her work demands much of her.”

Does j’Kuwali sound approving or censorious? Steve can’t tell. It doesn’t matter, either way. “She demands it of herself. But the work doesn’t help. Either way, be prepared to come second to it.” The words slip out before he can stop them.

“Was that your dissension with her?”

Steve thinks that got personal fast. “I’m not the one marrying her.”

“I should sooner ask T’Challa to leave his responsibilities as king. Maria is as she is; that is her attraction.”

This time, Steve definitely feels the condemning sting in j’Kuwali’s words. “And how much room will there be for her responsibilities in your marriage? With the King of Wakanda and his lovers on one side, and Maria on the other?”

J’Kuwali’s expression has turned wary. “That is between our _sedoretu_ , and no matter of your concern.”

“So long as Maria’s still working world security, it’ll be my concern.”

Dark eyes watch him with measured suspicion. “Maria said there was no agreement between you.”

“There wasn’t.” Nothing as formal as an agreement; just desire, just convenience, just—

Taking dinner up to her, because JARVIS said she hadn’t eaten. Coaxing her away from her desk for an hour, maybe two. Dragging her out to the park, or the ballgame, or riding up the interstate on their bikes. Using his body to distract her, exhaust her, to make her stop thinking for just a little while. Listening to her working, following the endless slipstream of conversations and contacts and missions and managing, offering his own opinions and solutions when hers ground to a halt...

There was no agreement between them, no arrangement, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t love. But love isn’t enough for Maria in a relationship. Maria needs the work, just as Steve needs the fight. And he can’t see any way there’ll be room for her work in the Wakandan  _sedoretu_ , with three Wakandan nationals, one of them royal, and the other two coming to the marriage focused on T’Challa rather than Maria. 

A good  _sedoretu_ – a good marriage – involves balance, not just emotion, and Steve can’t see the balance.

“We didn’t have an agreement,” he tells j’Kuwali. “That doesn’t mean that we’re not friends.”

“And it is as a _friend_ that you are concerned about her marriage?”

“Yes.” The words come out flat and a little harsh. “As all her friends are.”

“You judge us harshly.”

“And you get to prove me wrong.” Steve turns to head back to his quarters. “I’d prefer you proved me wrong, j’Kuwali.” 

He doesn’t say what will happen if they don’t because he doesn’t get a say in what happens if they don’t; he only gets to watch it all fall apart. He doesn’t want to watch Maria’s choices drag her down, but he doesn’t have the right to make them for her, either. All he can do is bring this up with Maria, and maybe she’ll throw him out on his ear, but maybe she’ll listen. He hopes she will.

Conviction solidifies with every step, a hot and righteous ignition in his chest. It lasts until he reaches his suite, where his doorkeeping display says that Sharon came by in the morning but left no message.

On the other hand, Natasha came by in the afternoon but only said, “ _We need to talk. Contact me._ ”

Steve doesn’t think he can take whatever Nat wants to say to him right now, so he goes into his rooms and sits down, staring out into the vivid sunset over the city and trying not to think about Bucky and Sharon, about Maria and her marriage, about Natasha and what she wants to say to him.

Tomorrow. He’ll deal with it all tomorrow.


	6. Chapter 6

When Steve turns up at her door at the crack of dawn, Natasha’s a little surprised. Then again, she did ask to speak to him, she just expected a little later in the day.

His hair’s damp, like he just got up, but he doesn’t look like he had a particularly restful night. She does the gracious thing and offers him coffee, because she was just about to order some herself, and he looks like he could do with a cup, and it’s probably best that he has one before they discuss why he’s here.

It’s probably best that _she_ has one before they discuss why he’s here... 

“So what do we need to talk about?”

And it seems they’ll be having this conversation uncaffeinated.

Natasha sits back to make herself comfortable. This is important. “I wanted to apologise for what I said the other night. It was...out of line and I shouldn’t have said it.” There were other factors – she was angry, still reeling at Maria’s news – but she still shouldn’t have cast Steve’s inadequacies into his face.

“You were right,” he says after moment too long. “I’m not a sanctuary. Especially not for Maria.”

“That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“No.” Steve stares down at his hands. “Apology accepted.” A wry, almost sardonic smile touches his lips. “I...don’t think I was particularly nice, either.”

“You weren’t.”

“I’m sorry about that.” He pauses.” So we’re even?”

“Sort of.” Natasha watches him relax a little. She almost regrets what comes next, because she has a feeling that he doesn’t yet know. “Sharon left Wakanda yesterday afternoon. What happened?”

She’s pretty sure she knows. James was moody and defensive all yesterday, and Natasha doesn’t need book, chapter, and verse to read between the lines. Now, watching surprise, hurt, and guilt play across Steve’s face before it turns to relief and resignation, she figures it’s better they have this conversation now.

“Sharon doesn’t care to share me with Bucky.”

“You didn’t already know that?” 

“It doesn’t matter. Bucky doesn’t want me.” He looks angry – the darker twin to James’ dissatisfaction all yesterday. Whoever said men didn’t get moody was either a man himself or hadn’t ever lived with a man for any length of time before.

“Bucky doesn’t want to share you with someone who doesn’t want to be sharing.”

Steve starts as James has sauntered out of the bedroom. Anger and frustration, plain in the set of his mouth and the tension in his neck; envy in the glance he flashes at Natasha; and a hungry regret.

“Is that your agreement with each other, then?”

“We haven’t actually discussed it,” James says. “But I don’t mind sharing, so long as they’re okay with it – and it’s not another guy.” He drops a kiss on Natasha’s shoulder, murmuring, “So don’t go getting ideas about T’Challa. Or Banner.”

Natasha flicks him on the chin. She’s seen enough of T’Challa’s responsibility, power, and authority to realise that she doesn’t want a man who expects to be obeyed – and has the right to be obeyed in his own country. And Bruce was...well, an attraction that didn’t turn out so well in the end.

“Steve.”

“Bucky.”

They stare at each other, apparently unable to say anything else to each other right now. Natasha rolls her eyes as she picks up the ordering system for the Guestkeeper service, and puts in a request for breakfast for five.

“Five?” James asks, startled out of his staring competition with Steve and sitting down beside Natasha.

“You haven’t noticed that Steve eats like it’s his last meal, and grazes all day – like a cow?”

“Do you mind?”

“Hardly.”

The sniping is a reassuring familiarity, reminiscent of long hours in each other’s company while on mission, drawn out discussions, sharp quips, and the reliable and connecting thread of their work as Avengers.

“We used to joke that rations didn’t apply to the Howling Commandos.” James blinks, then continues. “Dum Dum used to say grace before every meal – only he didn’t pray it, he’d say it to Steve. ‘ _For the non-rations we’re about to eat, we give thanks to Steve for being a goddamn national treasure that needs feeding..._ ’”

Steve chokes. “I’d forgotten that.”

“I only just remembered. It’s still...fragments.” James shrugs, almost bashful in the recollection. “The Wakandans and Natalia say it might always be fragments.” 

“Is that why you don’t want—”

“For fuck’s sake, asshole, it’s not about _wanting_.” His frustration is palpable, and Natasha splays her hand against his back in reassurance. The metal hand comes to rest on her knee, the fingers heavy and cool through the light fabric of her slacks. “Of course I remember you. I remembered you when I didn’t remember anything else! But we’re not who we were when we made that promise, and Carter wasn’t going to share you, so, yes, I took an exit. However, I’m willing to renegotiate.”

Steve looks pointedly at the hand on Natasha’s knee. “It’s not like Natasha and I haven’t shared before.”

“Not quite.” At the lift of his brows, she clears the lump in her throat and elaborates. “By the time you started seeing Maria, we hadn’t been together for a while.” Actually, now that she counts it up in her head, it had been nearly a year. “So technically, we were never both with Maria at the same time.”

“You don’t need my permission,” Steve says, more to James than to Natasha. “It’s not cheating.”

“Like I said.” James shrugs. “But we’re not just getting back together, Steve. We’re working it out. Think of it as romancing me – you’ve never done that.”

“Long runs over frosty fields by moonlight don’t count?”

“Not when there’s Nazis shooting at us.”

“Well, there weren’t _always_ Nazis shooting at us.”

Natasha watches the blush slide up James’ neck with some surprise. Out of all the things she’d have expected to embarrass Bucky Barnes, sexual encounters in the middle of the war never made the list. Then he glances at her, and she thinks he might be...anxious?

She reaches out and touches her fingers to the hot skin, and he quivers a little, then relaxes.

Steve clears this throat. “That’s another thing, Nat. You’re... We have a history and it’s a long one. There’s a lot in there, and you’ll have to deal with our...familiarity with each other, not just another relationship. It can... It can be a big ask. I’m not exactly easy going.”

“Oh?” She lifts an eyebrow and he smiles ruefully.

“In case you didn’t already know that.”

“Your history together isn’t exactly coming out of nowhere, Steve. So maybe the question is whether you can deal with my history with him? Or his own history?”

“What do you mean?” 

They look at each other, last night’s confessions hanging between them.

“You’ve mostly known me as Bucky,” James takes the lead. “You came for me because I was – I am – Bucky. And I guess it would be easier to just be ‘Bucky’. But I’m also ‘James’ – the Winter Soldier, and...I always will be. Those things that I did – they weren’t my will but I did them all the same. Natalia understands that.” The glance he gives her holds all the complications of who they are, who they were, and who they want to be. “That’s something that you’ll have to come to terms with, Steve. I don’t think you have. Howard is just the beginning of it.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, because Steve doesn’t know this about her. Or hasn’t faced it. He’s good at that. “We left a trail of bodies behind us – the Black Widows, the Winter Soldier. You don’t know about mine because they mostly went unnoticed.”

“How do you not notice people dying?”

“They were attributed to something else. A heart attack, suicide – accidents happen. Or else they weren’t direct deaths. Scandals, spoked wheels, political careers – a married politician caught sharing secrets with a high-class madam... Mistresses who torched burgeoning political careers, who encouraged up and coming men to play fast and gamble hard, and then pushed the gun up under their chin and told them they were useless, worthless and they should just pull the trigger. And if they baulked at pulling the trigger...”

James’ fingers close more tightly around hers. Natasha grips back without looking at him, knowing that as hard as this is for her, it’s harder for him. Her sheet drips with blood, but James’ sheet is soaked in it, and he had no choice in any of it. Howard Stark wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the last, but he was the worst – a friend that James murdered without thought because he had no thought, only the mission.

“When history went the wrong way, history was corrected,” Steve murmurs, looking at James.

“I’ve got a lot of history, Steve. Very little of it is worthy of Sergeant Barnes of the Howling Commandos. Natalia could redeem herself in S.H.I.E.L.D, with the Avengers. I can’t. ‘ _All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand_.’”

“Lady Macbeth knew what she was doing. You didn’t.”

“And how do you prove that? In a court of law? In the court of public opinion? And if the defence is that I didn’t know what I was doing, then what about Natalia and the other Black Widows who, to some extent, _did_ know?”

Natasha feels more than a little sorry for Steve, sitting there trying to find an answer that works within his worldview. Still, he has to live with what James has done; he has to accept that he can love someone who’s been a murderer and killer against his will. And if he can’t...

If he can’t, then what hope does Natasha have, who did those things without even the defence of brainwashing?

“You can’t make this right, Steve. Our situations were bad, and yes, we did what we had to survive, but we still did those things. There’s no defence that makes it right – there’s no jury that wouldn’t find us guilty – and there shouldn’t be.”

“But you’re trying to balance it out.”

“What balance is there for taking life?” James asks. “I can’t bring back the people I killed; I can’t bring back Howard and his wife, give back the parents Stark lost. I can’t go back and stop HYDRA from rising up and taking over S.H.I.E.L.D. What I’ve done is done. We can ignore it and just pretend it never happened, we can start to do good, but what’s done is set in stone.”

“There’s nothing that can make it better,” Natasha thinks of an orphanage and children who didn’t escape – who didn’t yet know that where they sheltered was a prison that would cage them in mind and spirit. She leans slightly against James, and although his prosthetic hand isn’t warm, his grip is sure in hers. He understands – out of all people – he understands what she’s been through, what she’s done. “Steve, if you take him—”

“ _Us_.”

“If you take us, then you take us knowing what we were, without trying to sanitise it, or make it okay. We’re not that – not now. But we were then.”

Steve stares at her for a long moment. “Did Fury know?” Then his eyes switch to James. “Did Maria?”

James stares back. “The first night she let me share her bed—not like that,” he adds as Steve tenses. “Jesus, Steve, what do you take me for? The first night, Maria asked if I shot at her in a Heidelberg hotel. So yeah, she knows.”

And still bedded down beside him, sleeping within arm’s reach of a killer, a murderer, and a man who’d already tried to strangle her once while under the belief that she was trying to control him. Natasha smiles to herself. That sounds exactly like Maria.

“Maria knew. Nick, of course. Clint. Coulson. A few others from S.H.I.E.L.D.” A wash of aching warmth floods her. After this talk, she’ll go find Maria. If nothing else, she needs to apologise, to make things right between them, even if she wants to bodily drag Maria out of Wakanda and keep her prisoner until she comes to her senses. Natasha clears her throat. “We wouldn’t have been lovers if Maria hadn’t known.”

_It’s a question of trust and complications. I don’t trust anyone._

She’d trusted Natasha – not just when blood needed to be shed, but when she needed somewhere to go, someone to rely on. And Natasha let herself become blasé about it – the Black Widow, an Avenger, trusted by everyone – Nick Fury, Captain America – even Maria Hill!

“Maria is the other matter we have to talk about.” James is saying, now. “Because if she’s going to get herself into a _sedoretu_ , it might as well be ours.”

Natasha feels suddenly light-headed, a thickness in her throat that clutches at her breath. This wasn’t something they discussed last night. It’s nothing that she saw coming. That doesn’t mean it’s unwelcome – not to her, at least.

She looks at Steve and sees the same flash of hope in his gaze, swiftly shut down. 

James looks from one to the other. “Don’t tell me you never thought of it.”

“I thought of it.” The words sound ragged, like they’re being dragged from Steve. His fingers clutch at the armrest for a moment before he makes them let go, and his body language is suddenly wired and tense. “But there’s a vast difference between thinking about it and acting on it. And she’s accepted T’Challa and his _sedoretu_ —”

“No, she hasn’t.” James turns to Natasha. “Remember what T’Challa said the other night? She hasn’t accepted yet. She can still get out.”

“It’s not getting out— She may not _want_ —” Steve makes a noise that’s halfway between a laugh and a sob. Natasha understands. Hope is a terrible thing to foster. “You haven’t even accepted _me_ , Buck. Arranging a _sedoretu_ when three sides are still in question is...brazen.”

“This surprises you?” There’s a boyishness to his expression, an eagerness that seem to erase the years he spent as military assassin. “Come on, Steve. Have I ever done anything in halves? Or three-quarters, for that matter?” He indicates the three of them – an unfinished _sedoretu_.

In the face of Steve’s hesitation, Natasha forces a smile. “He broke up with his girlfriend _and_ his boyfriend just yesterday. He might need a little time—” 

The doorbell rings out, and the cool voice of the automated Guestkeeper rings out. “ _Sera Okoye j’Kuwali and Ser N’Kechi j’Kuwali to see Natasha Romanova_.”

Both Okoye and N’Kechi to see her? Natasha rises as she gives permission for the guests to enter.

Okoye strides in like it’s her suite, not Natasha’s, with N’Kechi moving less forcefully, but no less intent. As she sees Steve and James present, she checks. Then she focuses a dark, laser-like gaze on Natasha. 

“What did you say to Maria yesterday? I know she came to see you.”

The question is just shy of a demand. Natasha’s hackles go up, but she answers smoothly, “That’s between Maria and I. If she hasn’t chosen to tell you—”

“Maria has left Wakanda.” N’Kechi looks narrow-eyed at James and Steve. “She gained clearance for Wakandan airspace and departed early this morning.”

“And we come to you this morning to find you meeting with your compatriots?” Okoye glares. “This is not coincidence!”

James laughs – a short bark of amusement. “You’re the ones she was thinking of marrying! If she’s left without telling you, then that’s not _our_ fault.”

“Says a man who has known her less than two months – unless it was as a buzzard watches a rabbit for the kill!”

James snorts. “You’ll have to do better than that. I’ve had plenty of people in my sights over the years; Maria is one of them, yes. But even I know that she comes and goes as the need arises, and not because someone says she should.”

_Even I know..._

Natasha has seen the Winter Soldier in action and at as much rest as he was allowed, she has watched the tapes of Sergeant Barnes at war. But she has never seen James Buchanan Barnes of Brooklyn, NY, asshole extraordinaire, in action before.

“If Maria had to go, it was necessary.” Steve looks at N’Kechi. It’s not quite smug. “And if you knew anything about her, then you’d know better than to come along accusing anyone of complicity in her departure.”

Natasha wants to laugh. It seems ‘asshole extraordinaire’ is catching.

And Maria’s _gone,_ fled before anything could be finalised. 

James was right. If she left without telling the j’Kuwali cousins, then it’s not settled and it never was. 

But why didn’t she tell Natasha? Her mind spins around, trying to catch at the trailing ends of her thoughts. She thought they’d at least found neutral ground after yesterday morning. Maybe even common ground when it came to world security.

 _It’s a lot to take in,_ Maria said at the end, looking just a little lost as she sat on the couch in the morning sunlight. _The possibilities of working from Wakanda._

_And on top of it all, you’re getting married._

_Yes, that, too._

The non-committal answer hadn’t given Natasha hope at the time – she didn’t dare hope, then. Now...

“Maria comes and goes as her work requires,” Steve is saying. “I said you should expect that the job will come first for her. That’s how it’s always been—”

“If it was work, she would have told us.” Okoye is unrelenting in her anger and frustration – and her fear. “She would not have left in the middle of the night without telling us!”

“So,” drawls James, “if it’s not work – because then she would have told you... does that mean it’s personal?”

There’s a moment when Natasha’s fully prepared to body-block Okoye if the Wakandan woman leaps for James’ throat. She’s seen how the Dora Milaje move, and they’re _fast_.

The doorbell rings.

“ _T’Challa of Wakanda._ ”

“Getting kinda crowded around here,” Steve murmurs.

The j’Kuwali cousins turn their focus to T’Challa as he enters, and while his eyebrows rise slightly at the sight of them, he seems less surprised that James or Steve are in Natasha’s quarters, merely nodding in their direction.

“I see all the people who need to be present are here.”

_All the people...?_

“My king—” Okoye falls silent as he lifts a hand to halt her.

“Maria came to me last night,” he says in his measured, quiet way. “She needed to leave before dawn on a situation which was urgent and so she requested my direct permission to leave Wakanda.”

Which explains her absence at least. But T’Challa’s not finished.

“At the time she came to me, she also stated that she wished to decline our offer of _sedoretu_.” Natasha’s heart clutches as T’Challa continues, looking at the j’Kuwali. “She has thought it over, but concluded she would be unable to fulfil the necessary diplomatic responsibilities towards Wakanda, particularly in light of her work within World Security.”

N’Kechi looks disappointed at the news, but Okoye is stricken and shocked. She says something in a swift stream of Wakandan – too fast for Natasha to parse.

Cynically, Natasha imagines the blow to Okoye’s ambitions is significant, before she forces herself to be fair. The other woman did like Maria for Maria, so it wasn’t a sham, just opportunistic. She can respect opportunistic – at least, she can now that Maria’s taken herself out of Okoye’s reach. But where’s Maria gone? And why didn’t she tell Natasha she was going – even a message or a mail?

_When have you had time this morning to check your inbox?_

“What did you say to her yesterday?” Okoye turns on Natasha, so sharply that James yanks Natasha behind him. Steve steps forward, ready to flank them. Okoye tenses, her right hand groping at her hip – but she’s wearing no weapon. That doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous, though—

“Okoye.” T'Challa's warning is measured and checks her immediately. N’Kechi touches her arm, and murmurs something in Wakandan, his voice so low, Natasha can’t make out the words.

Okoye shakes him off, and replies back in the same language, the timbre of her voice harsh and grating. N’Kechi winces, but shakes his head. Okoye glares at Natasha and storms out of the suite. Wakandan doors don’t slam, but Natasha finds herself waiting for the sound all the same.

“Hell hath no fury...” James starts before he sees Natasha’s expression.

“We don’t know that she’s scorned Okoye,” Steve says quietly. “Just that she’s declined to marry her in _sedoretu_.”

“To our loss and dismay,” says N’Kechi stiffly. His demeanour is one of anger and frustration, but he’s civil. “It seems, Captain Rogers, that you will not have to judge us after all. I give you good day.” He touches T’Challa on the shoulder as he passes, and the look they exchange is as speaking as an oration.

“Judge them?” James asks Steve as the door hisses closed. Steve just shrugs.

Natasha draws a long, slow breath. “So, what now?”

“You will understand that we are disappointed,” T’Challa says quietly. “Maria would be a valuable addition to Wakanda.”

“She’s not a resource to be utilised, T'Challa!”

“And yet we are weapons, each of us.” His gaze skims James and Steve before returning to Natasha. “She would have used Okoye and I – and N’Kechi, also – in the service of her goals, as we would have used her in the service of our own. That would not have kept us from loving her, nor her from loving us – but it must be acknowledged.”

“So what happens between you and Okoye now?”

T’Challa sighs. “She will struggle among the Dora Milaje; they are unhappy with her machinations regarding N’Kechi and Maria and will retaliate accordingly.”

“It won’t be pretty,” Natasha murmurs, thinking of the Dora Milaje she knows: Nakia, Aneka, Ayo.

“That’s not our problem.” Steve says firmly. “We—”

A discreet bell sounds.

James throws up his hands. “Jesus Christ, what is it now?”

Natasha bites back a smile at the dramatics. “Only breakfast.” She turns to T’Challa. “You’re welcome to join us. There might even be enough!”

“I must say my thanks but decline,” he says with a smile that’s already weary. “I have a Council to appease, a public to reassure, and Dora Milaje to rein in.”

“Good luck with that.”

At the door, she stops him. “T’Challa...you really don’t know where Maria went? She didn’t say anything?”

“She didn’t tell me, and I knew better than to ask.” He hesitates. “I know you question my motives, Natasha, but it was not all expedience.”

It might not have all been expedience, but it wouldn’t have been a good relationship for Maria either.

Natasha stands in the entryway and checks her mail. Nothing from Maria.

When she returns, the guys have already fetched breakfast from the service shaft and are passing each other condiments and coffee with the fluidity and comfort of long practice. Natasha watches as Steve passes James a cup of coffee with a quiet smile. In return James tosses him a piece of bread. Steve catches it neatly in his mouth, playful in a way that she’s never seen before.

Tenderness whips around her heart and squeezes until she’s breathless.

T’Challa’s right – they’re weapons, not made for domesticity. This isn’t how it would be every day – or even most days. But the sense of belonging wouldn’t change, whatever the situation. The connections between them are too strong to be denied or abandoned, whatever they’ve tried to leave behind.

They’ll just have to work it out, the three of them – four, if they can get Maria on board.

Maria’s the last piece – the one that fits, the one that works. Someone to trust, and someone to be trusted by. Someone who knows them, who maybe even loves them, although she would never say the words. If they can only persuade her, if they can only _find_ her...

She blinks as Steve calls her name again. He’s holding out a cup of coffee. “Are you going to sit down, or are you just going to stare?”

Natasha makes herself take the coffee from him and retreats back beside James. But as she sits down, the phone in her back pocket rings, shattering the peace once more.

“It would be that, wouldn’t it?”

“Only a handful of people know this number.” Natasha informs James sharply. “Including Maria.” 

That silences him, and her heart lollops in anticipation even as she quickly swipes to answer the call.

“This is Romanoff.”


	7. Chapter 7

By the time Natalia’s phone rings, Bucky’s starting to feel a little overwhelmed.

Breaking up with Steve. Sharon Carter’s departure. Natalia and the discussion about them. Getting Steve back and floating the possibility of stealing Maria from T’Challa, only to realise that Maria’s taken herself out of that equation. And now Maria calling...

Bucky eyes the coffee cup Steve gave Natalia, and then takes it from her and sets it down on the table. Natalia’s not going to be paying attention to such small things as coffee when Maria’s called—

Only it’s not Maria.

“ _I’ve heard some disturbing rumors_.” The voice is deep and male, with the drawl of the south, and the authority of command.

Natalia’s body grows subtly tense. “There are always rumors.”

“ _A wedding on the books? Certain assets on the loose?_ ”

“You’re late with the news, Nick. The wedding’s been called off. And I used to be an asset, too – and I’m on the loose.”

Steve’s coffee cup pauses on the way back down to his lap. _Nick... Nick..._ Bucky closes his eyes for a moment, and tries to recall why the name is familia—

_Oh._

“ _Are you keeping company, Natasha?_ ”

“Maria left Wakanda late last night or early this morning, Nick. Was that you?”

“ _I’m both flattered and disturbed. Contrary to what certain people seem to believe, I don’t control everything._ ”

“Just everything within your reach.”

“ _A man’s reach should exceed his grasp._ ” Fury doesn’t sound repentant. “ _And, no, I don’t know where Maria’s gone. My kids don’t always call, you know._ ”

Her mouth twists. “There’s a reason for that, you know.”

“ _Right. So, I’m guessing we’re not going to discuss item number two on the memo?_ ”

She looks at up Bucky, her expression softening a little. Self-consciousness washes over him at the close study. It’s still a new feeling to be seen, heard, noticed.

“No,” Natalia tells Fury . “We’re not.”

The snort on the other end of the line is expressive. “ _Try not to set the world on fire._ ” There’s a pause and then a very pointed, “ _Leave that to Rogers._ ”

Steve looks distinctly nonplussed but whatever response is hovering on the tip of his tongue goes unsaid. Bucky is filled with the sudden conviction that he should be sitting beside Steve, holding him back.

“Well, he had a little help with that last time.”

The huff has the distinct overtones of a grumpy old man. “ _I’ll keep my eye out with my connections, but you know Kipling’s cat._ ”

“You know, I used to think that was me.”

“ _With Barton looking over your shoulder all the time? Not likely._ ” There’s a hesitation, before the old man says, quite deliberately, “ _Be good._ ”

There are no extensive farewells, the two just hang up.

Natalia puts the phone away, presses her hands into her eyes for a moment, then drops her hands from her face. She looks...not distressed exactly, but certainly not in a calm frame of mind. Bucky hands back her coffee, and starts putting together a plate of food – flatbread and fruit and a pastry.

“So Fury knows where we are,” Steve says crisply. “ _And_ what we’re doing.”

“Did you doubt it?”

“I hoped.”

Bucky is both intrigued and disturbed by the way Natalia has shifted, her body tense and defensively closed in when she looks at Steve. It’s a point of contention between them then? But didn’t Steve work with Fury’s organisation for a while?

_I need you to do this one, last thing—_

He blocks the memory out by wondering how Maria walked the line between Steve and Fury; it couldn’t have been easy navigating between lover and—

“Oh.” When the others look at him quizzically, he winces. “Uh, I guess this means I tried to kill my father-in-law?”

It takes Natalia a moment to get it; she might not instinctively think of Fury as a father figure, but neither did she argue Fury’s phrasing: _My kids don’t always call_.

In contrast, Steve springs to instinctive defence. “You weren’t yourself, Buck.”

“Would that stand up in a court of law?”

“This isn’t a court of law!” Steve growls. “You were brainwashed – you weren’t yourself. You know that and we know that—”

“Shut up, asshole.” But maybe that’s a bit too cavalier for Steve in his current frame of mind? “Throttle back. I know I wasn’t – I know it’s not my fault. I don’t need that reassurance.” He holds Steve’s gaze. “It was a joke, okay?”

“Not a very amusing one.” Steve exhales and starts refilling his plate. “I need food.”

“Hungry Cap is grumpy Cap.” Natalia’s comment earns her a glare.

“And we haven’t finished discussing...whatever this is going to be,” Steve adds as he scoops spread onto the flatbread, and helps himself to fruit. “We can’t, either...not until we talk with Maria about it. She hasn’t accepted us yet.”

“She will.”

Bucky watches Steve’s mouth twist at Natalia’s assurance, and asks, “Is there going to be an ‘us’ for Maria to accept, Steve?”

A brief hesitation in the collection of food is the only sign that Steve’s heard at first. Then he sits back in his seat and looks to Natalia. “Maybe I’m not a sanctuary Maria wants.”

“Maybe I’m not a sanctuary she wants either. The only way to find out for sure is to ask. And we never did. We just...assumed that everything was working out to plan.”

“If it wasn’t, she could have said—”

“Did you tell Sharon that she’d be sharing you with James?” Her laugh is sharp and shallow as Steve looks away. “Maria and I never talked about tomorrow. We’re...not the kind of women that have tomorrows. And we’re not the kind of women that guys come home to, either. You think maybe you’re not a sanctuary? Maria _knows_ she isn’t. And so do I.”

_I can’t offer you sanctuary like T’Challa._

Bucky reaches for her hand. “Natalia—”

She shakes him off, her mouth a soft twist. “We’re not like you and Steve, James. We didn’t grow up among people who cared about us. We never had anyone we could rely on – not personally, not until we were adults. You meant it as a joke, but in a way, you’re right – Nick’s the closest thing to a father that Maria or I ever had.” She looks at Steve. “We come with baggage – and that...that may not be what the two of you want. But it’s all we have – it’s what we are. You can take us or you can leave us. I’d like to know sooner than later.”

There’s a moment when Bucky thinks Steve might walk away. He can see the internal battle being waged, he just doesn’t know which arguments might be winning.

“And if Maria doesn’t want us?”

“If she doesn’t want us,” Bucky says, “then she doesn’t want us. But there has to be an ‘us’ for her to consider before she can reject it.”

Steve’s mouth twists and his gaze drops to the table. Bucky’s throat aches. Uncertainty isn’t something that people would associate with Captain America, but they didn’t see Steve Rogers of Brooklyn struggle through adolescence and into manhood. They didn’t see him awkwardly offering a girl his arm only to get disdainful sniff – or worse, a pitying look; they never met the asshole with a heart and a will too big for his body – they’ve only ever known the man who’s everything a hero should be.

Bucky remembers. And breaking up with Steve twenty-four hours ago doesn’t change what they’ve had between them, what they were to each other, what they still could be.

But Steve has to be willing to take the risk, and maybe it’s too much to ask—

“I guess I’m still supposed to court you?”

Bucky’s heart leaps. “Oh, you’re not getting out of that, asshole.”

Steve’s laugh is brief and a little rough, and his gaze is rueful as he turns to Natalia. “Okay. If Maria wants us – even one of us – then I’m in. Is that good enough?”

“Yes.” Her smile is swift and bright with triumph. “The next matter is how do we find her?”

Steve shoots that down swiftly enough. “No. The next matter is breakfast.”

“The longer we leave her, the harder she’ll be to find—”

“I have ways to contact her,” Steve says sharply. “So do you. If you want to make contact with Maria, then that’s up to you. I’ll get in touch with her in my own way.”

Bucky puts a hand on Natalia’s thigh in warning not to keep at him. Steve is acquiescent to the idea of their _sedoretu_ , but something else is holding him back, and it’s not anything he’ll talk to her about.

Instead they talk about everything and nothing with the care of two people whose truce is fragile not because they don’t know each other enough, but because they know each other too well.

Bucky wonders if that doesn’t describe them all – fragile, because they know too much.

And yet it’s because they all know too much that this matters.

He wants Steve’s hand on his shoulder before the fight, his arm over Bucky’s chest in the night. He wants to wake to Natalia’s stretch, and counter to her arguments over dinner. He wants Maria here rolling her eyes as their Mornings snipe at each other like the glitter of reflected sunlight, and half-smiling when they turn on him as he tries to broker peace. He wants to share them with someone who trusts him with their hearts; and whom he can trust with their hearts and his own history, the horrors in his head, and who’ll share with him her own vulnerability.

Are they fooling themselves about Maria’s willingness to marry them? Bucky doesn’t think so, but he could be wrong.

Please Jesus, let him not be wrong!

When Steve leaves to speak with T’Challa’s security chief, Bucky ignores the unspoken invitation to join Steve. He lifts a cup of coffee in goodbye and waits for Natalia to come back.

“Playing hard to get?” Natalia sits down beside him.

“Steve’s difficult to keep at arm’s length. I’m using what I have to hand. But I’ll speak with him later.”

“And?”

Natalia watches him as he hesitates.

“I think I might go with him when he leaves Wakanda.” Bucky looks keenly at her, uncertain of her response. They talked a little about what was going to happen with him since Maria was probably staying in Wakanda, but Maria’s departure has changed all that. “Are you okay with that?”

“I’m not your keeper, James. You don’t have to check in with the little wife.”

“Well,” he murmurs, dropping his gaze, “I’m trained to check in with _someone_.”

“Ah.” Her hand covers his and she drops into Russian. “ _Is it needful_?”

“ _Not needful_.” He survived two years out of HYDRA, answerable to no-one, trying to piece together the fragments of his soul, trying to work past the blocks they put in his mind. He never _needed_ to check in; but it would make him more comfortable to know that it mattered where he is. He quotes a Russian proverb so she understands: “ _A burden of one’s own choice doesn’t encumber_.”

He’s doing this of his own choice. He wants to belong to her, to have someone who knows what happens to him, James Buchanan Barnes, and who still cares. It’s why he remembered Steve, who couldn’t let go of the friend he remembered, even if he’s not going to get all of him back. It’s why he slept next to Maria, who thought he should have a chance to be free of it all. He wants this – wants _them_. He wants to belong to them, to have them belong to him. He could have just Natalia, just Steve, but he wants Maria, too, as Evening sister-wife, fellow lover, trusted friend.

And perhaps there’s a poetic irony in that Bucky will never be free of what Zola did to him, but he can choose who he’ll be loyal to, who he’ll be beholden to, who owns his soul and his heart and grounds his spirit.

Natalia. Steve. Maria.

Speaking of which...

“Are you going to try to contact her?”

“Yes.” She shrugs and starts putting the dishes together on the tray, ready to take to the service shaft. “At the least, I think we need to talk. It will open up a line of dialogue; I...After the last week or two, I think that’s more important.” Her smile is brief and it wavers a little. “We’re not nice women, James.”

“We don’t want ‘nice’ women.” He catches her wrist and eases her into his lap, enjoying the way she both lets him pull her over and relaxes against him. “He may have a good rep, but I sure don’t. And we were never very tame, even during the war.”

“We make an...interesting quartet,” she murmurs, brushing a hand over the stubble of his cheek. “Captain America, the Winter Soldier, the Black Widow, and the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D...”

“Do you think Maria will throw in with us?”

She hesitates. “She might take some convincing.”

“From you?”

“From Steve.”

And that’s what Bucky’s afraid of. “Do you know why they split up?”

Her gaze rests on him. “They have to work it out themselves, James. You have to trust them.”

Bucky supposes he has to. If it wasn’t so important, maybe he would. But he’d still like to know what happened.

He has his chance later, after sex on the couch, a shower and a shave, and an appointment with the Wakandan technologists about the arm. Bucky finds Steve working on a Wakandan jet engine in an open-air hangar, and takes his time wandering about inspecting it.

“This is your ride out?”

“Once I find out where I’m going.” Steve looks up at him from his crouch down by the fuselage. “And whether I have company.”

“I contacted Maria.” Bucky watches Steve’s face close up and continues. “Didn’t get through, but I left a message asking for work. I wasn’t sure if I’d be leaving with you, so I didn’t mention it.”

The afternoon sunlight glints off Steve’s hair as he stands up. “I’ll always take your company, Buck.”

“Will you tell me why you’re so cagey about Maria, too?”

Steve looks around the empty, open space. They’re speaking low, but their voices are carrying all the same in the echoing acoustics of the hangar. “Not here.”

“Then where? Not in our rooms. Or the gym.”

The smile doesn’t quite hide the wince, but Steve covers with an amused, “Playing hard to get?”

“It’s not like you’ve ever had to work to have me before.”

It’s actually quite difficult to find somewhere that is both secluded enough to have a private conversation, but which is open enough to avoid getting intimate. Bucky wants the latter more than Steve; it’s not that he doesn’t trust Steve, it’s that he doesn’t trust _himself_.

“How about we take the track up the mountains?” Steve suggests in the end. “There’s an option to climb the last hundred yards...”

Getting hot and sweaty with Steve is possibly not the wisest choice, but it’s one that Bucky figures he’s going to have to overcome. If he’s going to be leaving Wakanda with Steve, they’re going to be alone together day and night, and while Steve won’t make a move without permission, he also won’t hold back from crowding Bucky.

Like holding out his hand to help Bucky over the edge at the top. Bucky nearly takes it, but then wonders if he wouldn’t find himself chest-to-chest with Steve again. Better not to risk it. He pulls himself up without any help, then climbs to his feet and blows out a breath.

The late afternoon sunlight spills across the jungles, and the city of Birnin Zana nestles in the midst of it like a jewel. Below them, the palace sits complacent, as the silver-blue chain of the river winds off towards the inland plains of the continent.

Steve surveys the country below. “Quite a view.”

Bucky didn’t come here to look at the view.

“Earlier today, you said ‘ _So long as she wants one of us_ ’.” Bucky presses on when Steve winces and looks away. “You wanna tell me why you think Maria doesn’t want you?”

Steve doesn’t answer at first. But Bucky waits, because they have time and this matters. If they’re going to make this marriage work, it’ll have to be more than his enthusiasm and Natalia’s assurance: Steve and Maria need to deal with whatever broke them up the first time. They need to come to this wholeheartedly – and Bucky would like Steve to trust him with whatever it was that scraped him raw in his relationship with Maria.

“Wanting wasn’t enough,” Steve murmurs at last, staring blindly down at the city. “Not for her, and I guess not for me, either. I mean, we were always careful: low-key, below the radar, never at S.H.I.E.L.D – rarely even among the Avengers, most of whom knew...”

And that wouldn’t have been good enough for Steve. Not with someone he loved.

Steve exhales, a long heave of breath. “And then we moved to the upstate facility, and she started backing away. She was busy, but she had a little free time... I just...wasn’t a priority.” The smile is slightly grim. “Her work always came first.”

“Her work is world security,” Bucky says, thinking of the calls Maria took at night, finding resources, connecting operatives. She stayed in Wakanda, but she kept doing what needed to be done. “So yeah, I think it comes first. Unless you want the little wife to stay home and keep everything warm for you—”

He shouldn’t sneer, but a woman who just wants to settle down and make a home would be no match for Steve. Even Peggy had her own work with British Intelligence during the war, seconded to the Howling Commandos in between her own missions – and look what she did even after they died. Maybe when he was sixteen, Bucky thought they’d settle down, but by the time they were fighting in the war, that was gone. Even before Bucky fell from the train, they’d seen and done too much – and Steve had become far more than he ever dreamed he might be – to go quietly back to Brooklyn.

“Bucky, that’s not-- Look, it’s not about what I want, okay? I want Maria – I want her as part of our marriage with Nat; I’d want her without. But she may not reciprocate. She was always careful with me – like I had to be kept at arm’s length, in case I wanted too much.” His mouth twists. “I was a useful operative, and good for sex besides, but not someone she’d go public with. I don’t want to be someone’s dirty little secret – convenient but not _wanted_.”

Bucky snorts. “Asshole, I can’t think of anything more _in_ convenient to Maria than a relationship with you.”

“What do you mean?”

The memory blossoms, arguments and snide comments, hustling Steve away before he could throw a punch, even though he wanted to throw one himself. He can even remember the Army officer, big and florid, sporting an impressive mustache and a personality like sandpaper. “Do you remember Colonel Halsing? In the war?”

“He sneered at Peggy going on missions.”

“Yeah. She’d vanish for a few days, and you’d fret like a mother hen until she was safely back. And Halsing argued that she was a risk – not because she was incompetent, but because when she was out, you couldn’t seem to keep your mind on our missions.”

“I could! Mostly.” Steve shakes his head. “It’s a different situation, Buck— Nobody’s trying to tell Maria what she can and can’t do—”

“Because nobody knew about her relationship with you.” Bucky says it quietly, but Steve stops. “Because she took care that nobody knew who didn’t already know her. She’s not ‘Cap’s girl’ the way Peggy was in the war; she’s Maria Hill.” Another memory comes to him, icy slivers of recollection. “Fury’s bitch.”

“What?”

“That’s what Pierce called her.” He can see Pierce’s tight-lipped frustration, can hear Zola’s dispassionate amusement: _allow the monkey his entertainments, we have bigger fish to fry_... He shakes his head to dispel the insult – both to Maria and to Nick Fury. “She’s always been judged by her proximity to the men in her life rather than what she knows or can do. So, yeah, you’re the opposite of convenient for her. If she wants to be taken seriously, she can’t have any lapses in judgement – particularly not one called ‘Steve Fucking Rogers’ - or maybe that should be ‘fucking Steve Rogers’. So maybe it’s not that she doesn’t want you; maybe it’s that...it’s a difficult thing for her to have you.”

“So I’m no good for her? That’s not what a man wants to hear, Buck.”

“Then maybe you’re not going to get what you want to hear.” His sharpness is intended to jerk Steve out of his self-pity. “Maybe the only way we have her is on the quiet – because God knows we’re painting a great big target on her back if she agrees to marry us.”

 _We make an interesting quartet,_ Natalia had said this morning. And ‘interesting’ is maybe one way to describe it, but ‘fucking complicated’ would be Bucky’s choice of term.

“Natalia said they come with baggage – this is one more piece. Maria was willing to be in a relationship with you once before, maybe she will again.” When Steve’s expression barely changes, Bucky presses, “She kept coming back to you, didn’t she?”

“Until the last time. But it’s the last time counts, Buck.” The laugh is a little raw, classic Steve choking back his frustrations, trying to not to show how much it stings. “Look, I said I’m in. There are always ways to work a _sedoretu_ if one party—if she doesn’t—if things don’t work standard. So long as Maria’s willing, I’ll do whatever it takes to make it fit.”

Bucky figures that’s as much as he’s going to get out of Steve for the moment. And it’s given him something to think on, work on with Steve when they leave Wakanda and get out in the world, just the two of them. Now, it’s pretty much up to Maria. If they can find her. If she still wants Steve and Natalia. If she wants a marriage at all. If they can make it work.

If a lot of ‘ifs’ come to pass.

Bucky just hopes Maria has it in her to take them in marriage. And if it’s not safe for her to make the marriage legal, at the least they’ll have her agreement.

Of course, first they have to find her.

Actually, first, there’s something else Bucky has to do.

“C’mere.”

He pulls Steve into a bearhug, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. After a moment, Steve relaxes, arms closing hard about him, his sigh rasping out in Bucky’s ear. They’ll sort it out, one way or the other. And even if Maria doesn’t want Steve, even if she doesn’t want _them_ – although, God, he hopes she does – Bucky will be there.

They stand for nearly a minute, clinging to each other, strength and comfort and reassurance.

Finally, Bucky pulls back.

“You know, I’m still going to make you work for it, asshole.”

Steve grins like the sunlight sparkling off the river below. He grips Bucky’s shoulder, hard and tender and familiar and new again. “Buck, I never imagined otherwise.”


	8. Chapter 8

Maria expects Bucky to be punctual when he tells her his ETA; she’s not wrong. What she doesn’t expect is for Steve to turn up with him. Then again, Natasha said the two of them had left Wakanda together two months ago, so perhaps it’s not such a big surprise.

“—thought you were joking about the entryway artwork.”

Steve’s laugh echoes through the lodge, and Maria looks up, her heart leaping at the comfortable sound of it, before she makes herself look back down again and continue typing. “Honestly? Wait until you see the lounge...”

“Maria?”

“In here,” she calls.

“What is this place?” Bucky walks in, disguise mesh in hand as he unzips his jacket. He gapes at the artwork on the wall behind Maria. “Jesus!”

Steve’s only a step behind, pulling both beanie and mesh off rather than looking around, since he’s already seen the décor. His gaze meets Maria’s for a moment, and the flicker of a shared amusement tilts his lips.

Maria doesn’t stare. But she might blink a couple of times. They’re rugged up like tourists – the ski-capped, snow geared, booted, backpacker kind. Which isn’t all that big a deal. No, more disconcerting is the change in their style – Steve’s style in particular. He’s grown his hair longer and shaggier, and grown a beard – no, a _goatee_. The effect is kind of a ‘white hipster’ version of Sam, and disconcerting.

Bucky, meanwhile, is still studying the art. At least his goatee works on his face. That, or Maria’s less accustomed to seeing him a certain way.

“Someone actually decorated this place?” Bucky paces the room. “What the fuck was wrong with them?”

“The answer to that question would take more time than is worth the explanation,” Maria says, gathering her scattered thoughts.

Bucky gives her a look. “Steve said there was _another_ room?” And he walks out and cross the entryway to the sunken lounge area with its fireplace and the tryptych of art hung high on the walls.

Steve turns cap and mesh around in his hands. “I’m guessing Bucky didn’t mention I was tagging along.”

“It’s no problem.” The words are out of her mouth, calm and courteous and professional as was ever expected of her. But the imp that prompts her next words is entirely her own masochism. “The beds are more than large enough for two.”

“I’d like my own actually. It turns out we don’t share so well anymore.”

“He’s a bedhog,” Bucky announces as he comes back inside and circles the table where Maria has everything laid out. His eyes flick across the notes, but his tone is sardonic. “Somewhere along the way, he learned to sprawl.” He looks pointedly over at her.

Startled at the so-casual reference to her relationship with Steve, Maria automatically protests, “I don’t sprawl.”

“Yeah, that’s probably how he learned. Asshole always likes to know you’re in arm’s reach.” He says it almost absently, studying the tablet in front of Maria. “This is our guy?”

It takes Maria a moment to parse his last question, let alone think of the answer. She’s not used to running an op with someone who so casually references matters she thinks of as personal in a professional setting. But clearly this is how Bucky is going to work this, so she’ll play by his rules.

“Yes. Genkino’s opted for a _pensione_ , but his girlfriend has friends staying in the Gasthof Zur Post, and she spends most of her time there while Genkino is off ‘skiing’.”

“Any intel from her?”

“Two things. He’s been meeting with American interests, and the package originated from a lab that was doing illegal DNA modifications in the wake of New York.” Maria pulls up the image on her tablet, along with the specs they’ve been able to retrieve. The size of a small luggage, and easily presentable as such. “On the surface, it’s just an irradiating dirty bomb.”

Steve steps in to look, hip to hip with Bucky, comfortably close and intimate.

“Just?”

“So what’s beneath the surface?”

“The current theory is that it’s a kind of...mutation bomb. Lay it down, set it off in a room full of people, and transform them into a room full of something else.”

“A room full of Steves?” He smirks.

“More likely a room full of Red Skulls.”

That brings him down pretty fast. “Oh. And we’re sure he hasn’t transferred it yet?”

“The intel we have suggests his buyer won’t be here for another two days yet. That gives you time to work out who Genkino’s meeting with, and how they’re likely to transport it.”

Bucky surveys the tablet. “Recon? Or retrieval?”

“Recon. Although if the perfect opportunity comes for retrieval, then take it. One of the secondary reasons I requested your assistance is the arm. Vibranium doesn’t absorb radiation the way most other substances do, so if retrieval becomes necessary, you’ll have a little more protection than anyone else I could send in.” She looks at Steve. “I presume you’re willing to partner with him in the field?”

Something passes between them. Steve smiles, although there’s an ironic twist to his lips. “I’ve been warned _against_ getting involved unless you deem it necessary.”

Interesting. “You’re here for moral support?”

“Moral support if he needs it. Operational support if you need it. And if neither, then...”

“Then?”

“Then he can sit around and look decorative.” Bucky says firmly.

Maria chokes. That’s the first time she’s ever heard anyone describe Steve Rogers as _decorative_ – but who else would say that but Barnes? And the aggrieved look Steve is giving Bucky—

She tries to control her laughter, biting her lip, but even though she drops her gaze and tries to push it down, it bubbles up in her, tickling her throat. And once she begins to laugh, there’s no stopping – and she doesn’t much want to, either. It’s been a long month, and she needs a good laugh.

When she eases back to mere coughing fits, both men are smiling at her. Bucky’s grin is almost smug, but the tender intensity in Steve’s eyes heats her from her belly out.

Maria drops her gaze to her tablet screen, confused, and only just hears Bucky’s comment over the pound of her heartbeat. “You look like you needed that.”

“You have no idea.” Maria takes a gulp of coffee from her cup and winces at it being cold. The pot on the table is empty, too – it’s been hours since she made any, too involved in reviewing data, working through possibilities.

“I’ll make some more coffee,” Steve says, easing his backpack off and putting it down to the side. “And something to eat.” He sheds his jacket and hangs it over the chair at the end of the table, then heads off into the kitchen. After a moment, she hears him moving around in the kitchen, working out what they have and what he can make. There should be just about anything he could need or want; she made sure the fridge was well-stocked once she arrived, since she had no idea what Barnes liked to eat.

Bucky divests himself of his pack and his jacket and pulls out a tablet of his own before sitting down opposite Maria. “The tendency to feed people is new,” he says in an undertone. “At least for me.”

Maria glances towards the kitchen and tries to think of the earliest days of their acquaintance, before they became sexually involved. She’s not sure she can actually remember

“Something else he learned, I guess.” Bucky sounds off-hand about it – perhaps a little too much so. Maria stares hard at him, but he’s apparently intent on the tablet. And his next question is equally off-hand. “How’ve you been? Nat said you’re not sleeping well.”

“That’s rich, considering she keeps on texting me at all hours.” Among other things.

The first few contacts after Wakanda were innocuous enough; until the night Nat texted, _I could do with someone to trust right now, if you’re willing._

“You don’t have to always answer them, you know...” The smirk on his face, swift and very male, says that he knows that her contacts with Natasha have become intimate, even if they’re not always sexual. And maybe they need to have a conversation about Natasha later, but Maria would rather focus on work right now. At least work doesn’t churn up her insides.

“Maybe not. And yet I do.” She pulls up some profiles and sends them across to his tablet. “So these are considered the most likely buyers for the device....”

Bucky gives her a hard look, but follows her change of topic, and attends to the individuals. He asks questions about her intel and methodologies for sorting through the information and coming to the conclusions she does. Maria answers them, because this is the process of them learning to trust each other out in the field. It’s a process she’s been through with Clint and Natasha and many other agents at S.H.I.E.L.D. She went through it with Steve, and even with Stark and the Avengers.

It’s all part of the interaction between operations control and field operatives, and while this isn’t S.H.I.E.L.D anymore, her methods and methodologies are still very much based in what she learned there, and what she refined while working with the Avengers in Stark Tower.

Steve brings out coffee, bread, and an omelette put together from the things in the fridge. He sits at the end of the table and serves out food. He doesn’t ask questions. That in itself is...disconcerting. Maria’s accustomed to the domestic stuff. She recalls at least one afternoon when she came home to him cleaning her apartment in Stark Tower, and he always preferred cooking at home to takeout. But when it came to the work they did, Steve was always either in the driver’s seat or an active participant. Seeing him taking the back seat is new.

After a couple of hours going over the mission, Bucky sits back, rubbing at his forehead. Steve excused himself some time ago and went upstairs to find a bedroom and take a shower, leaving them to it.

“I think that’s enough for me for now. I want to wander through the town a bit, check out the trails and where to go, make some observations on my own.”

“Now?” Maria glances out the window into the darkness. The sun set an hour ago, although she supposes that’s not a deterrent for Barnes.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind about Genkino moving the package tonight?” Bucky shrugs as he stands and stretches, sighing as his joints crack. “I might do a quick recon of town, though – go for a quick run, get a feel for how everything’s laid out. Then I want a hot shower and something to eat. I’ll ask Steve if he’ll cook.”

Maria watches as he saunters out, and a few moments later she hears his boots echo up the wooden stairs to the second floor. She takes her coffee cup and the bowl of corn chips over to the kitchen and puts it in the dishwasher, then stares blindly at the view out over the valley.

She can just hear the comfortable murmur of easy conversation upstairs and wonders if they’re negotiating bedrooms in spite of Steve’s declaration that they won’t be sharing. It’s none of her business if they do or don’t.

They’re here to get some work done, and work is what they’ll do. And her envy of what’s between Steve and Bucky – not the sexuality of it, or even that it’s between them, but the _comfort_ of it, the casual assurance they have in each other – will not become a stumbling-block in dealing with them. She won’t let it.

Still, she thinks it would be nice to have something like that, be part of something like that.

Wasn’t that part of the reason she even considered T’Challa’s offer of _sedoretu_?

Maria sighs, snags her cellphone, and goes upstairs, texting Nat.

_Did you know they were both going to turn up?_

She doesn’t have to wait long for an answer. _Contrary to popular belief, I don’t know everything. That’s your job. Problem?_

_No problem. Just unexpected._

_Uhuh._

Maria nearly types back, _What’s that supposed to mean?_ She takes a hot shower instead, and lets the steam relax her, sluicing away all her thoughts and worries. They’ll just come back, of course, as soon as she steps out of the bathroom, but a little respite from thought and consequence is welcome.

When she comes back downstairs, there’s jazz in the kitchen and Steve’s got a full production line going for a stir-fry – chopping meat and vegetables into neat little piles along the benchtop.

“Bucky’s gone out.” He doesn’t turn around. “He’ll be back for dinner.”

“He wanted to do some recon in town before he headed out to the trails tomorrow.” Maria studies the long back, wonders what he’d do if she went and slid her fingers in under the back edge of his t-shirt and ran her palm up and down his spine, the way she used to when they were lying in bed together. Dangerous thoughts. “You’re really not going to get involved?”

“He needs the space. I need to give him space.”

“That sounds like something Sam would say.”

Now Steve throws a smile over his shoulder. “That would be because it’s something Sam said. Although you said it, too.”

“I did?”

“ _You need to let him work out who he is without you._ ”

“I don’t remember that.”

He shrugs. “I do.” While Maria’s still parsing this, Steve adds, “Sam says ‘hi’ by the way.”

Maria asks after Sam, laying low in Egypt. In return, Steve asks about Tony, Rhodey, young Peter Parker, and the rumour that Pepper is back with Tony again. He tells her about Clint and a family incident that took place a few weeks back, to which Maria counters with the same incident, only from Laura’s point of view. The conversation’s comfortable and easy, nothing deep, nothing confronting.

Just like old times, really.

There’s only one moment of awkwardness when Maria mentions that Sharon called looking for work, and Steve winces. “I should have told her about Bucky.” He tilts the wok so the oil swirls around in it. “I regret not doing that.”

 _I’m not going to share him with Bucky Barnes. I deserve better than second place._ Sharon’s voice was cool and composed, but fractured echoes of bitterness lingered in her words, and her inflections gave it the weight of a mantra. Maria didn’t ask for any more information, didn’t correct Sharon about ‘second place’ in moiety relationships, just gave Sharon the work she was looking for.

Work helps. Maria knows this firsthand.

“She’ll probably forgive you eventually,” she tells Steve, who’s still looking a little disconsolate.“Most people do.”

“ _Most people_ —?” Steve pauses as the oil starts smoking, then shakes his head and starts tossing things in the pan. The sizzle of oil makes conversation impossible after that. Maria sets out plates, then heads into the lounge and turns to the BBC news to catch what’s happening in the world.

She hears Bucky come in the front door, a cheerful hail as he stomps his feet to be rid of the snow. He pokes his head in, then makes for the kitchen.

A few minutes later he comes back in again, handing her a plate of stir-fried noodles with a fork stuck in it and sitting down with his own. “Anything interesting?”

“The usual.” Politics, war, natural disasters, science and technology discoveries...

They watch through the news, briefly flick to a French language channel for the European version since they all understand basic French, and then end up at CNN where a newscaster is just finishing talking about the Flint Water Crisis back home. Maria makes a mental note to point Pepper and the Alloy Coating Project in SI’s R&D that way if it’s not already looking for a solution.

Steve is making some comment to Bucky about the poisons they probably drank back in the day before there were environmental standards, when the image behind the newscaster switches from a drop of water hanging from a clean, shiny tap to a topographical map of Africa.The newsreader comments that the Wakandan king attended a conference of African nations just this week in the company of his all-female security force. T’Challa smiles briefly at the camera before one of the Dora Milaje touches him on the arm – Aneka, perhaps? Maria looks for Okoye, but she’s not there. There’s commentary about T’Challa’s singleness, and the next shot shows a young woman – some president’s offspring – simpering up at him. The newsreader remarks that rumours of a foreign marriage recently came to light, only to be flatly denied by official channels.

“Do you ever regret it?”

Bucky is watching her, curious and expectant. Steve is staring at his bowl, but after a moment, he also lifts his gaze to Maria, waiting for an answer. She should have been ready for the question. After all, she gave them every expectation that she was going to marry into T’Challa’s _sedoretu_ before Akela called her with an extraction gone bad and she realised just how much she’d be giving up.

“Sometimes,” she admits. “Wakandan power and technology behind an otherwise independent world security... With the way the situation is turning in America, the fracturing of the Avengers...Wakanda would have been perfect.” But the price was too high.

“That wasn’t the question.” Bucky says it mildly, but it’s a rebuke nevertheless, and Maria flushes. “Do _you_ regret walking away from _them_?”

She nearly retorts that that’s a personal question. But something about the way he looks at her – something about the way Steve is holding himself, tense and rigid – compels her to answer.

“Most of the time, no. I don’t...I don’t think I’d be a very good wife. I...wouldn’t have made a very good sister-wife to the King of Wakanda. And I wouldn’t have been able to keep doing world security.”

“Wasn’t T’Challa willing to let you operate out of Wakanda?”

“He was.” Maria struggles to find the words to explain her decision. “But he’s a king. He and the people he marries have to think about the good of Wakanda first, even if that means world security takes a hit. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t live like that.”

It occurs to her that she’s once again skirted the question Bucky is asking – not about the opportunities she lost, but the _people_.

 _If you need me, I’ll be there – for you, or for world security_.

That offer – either of friendship or else the calm distance of a professional relationship without anything more to it – was an anchor she needed that morning. One person to trust her judgement, whatever decision she made, whatever doubts she had. Someone who had her back.

For that, she answers the question.

“T’Challa’s been understanding – we spoke a few times before this recent African conference but then he became busy. I haven’t spoken to Okoye since the week after I left Wakanda.”

That call was barely civil, bitterness and anger and thwarted ambition colouring their conversation. Maria wrote an email to the other woman, but hasn’t heard anything back and doesn’t really expect to. The reason she liked Okoye in the first place was because the Wakandan was a woman of fiercely held belief and passion beneath the calm; no shock that that hasn’t changed.

“And j’Kuwali?” Steve asks quietly.

It’s not his business, but... “N’Kechi calls now and then.”

Bucky tilts his head, sharp and surprised. “Like Nat?”

“No. Not like Nat.” They chat, conversational and easy, but platonic, and if Maria regrets anything in walking away, it’s that they never got to develop the relationship between them. But N’Kechi hasn’t asked for more, and even if he did, Maria would hesitate over giving it; becoming a lover to the lover of the King of Wakanda is very much a political declaration. If she’d realised that earlier, maybe she could have saved them all this tangle. “N’Kechi and I are just friends.”

Bucky and Steve exchange a look.

“You’re okay with that?” Bucky asks Maria.

Wary, she looks from him to Steve. “Shouldn’t I be?”

Bucky looks at Steve, asking a silent question. Steve shuffles forward, setting his plate on the coffee table, then stays on the edge of his seat, his hands on his knees. “We wanted to ask—” He pauses as Bucky pulls out his phone and starts calling someone.

“She belongs in this conversation, too.”

 _She—_ Maria stares at the phone as the line is picked up. _“James?_ ”

“Group discussion. You’re on speakerphone.”

Maria figures what the hell. “Hello, Nat.”

“ _Maria. I see they went with the ambush option._ ”

The ambush option. Yes, that describes this quite nicely.

Steve looks at her. “Me and Bucky. Bucky and Nat. Nat and you... You and me?”

She’s still breathing. But the air drawing in her lungs suddenly feels very hard.

“You’re asking me to marry you.”

“All of us.” Bucky relaxes into the seat. “I suggested we steal you back in Wakanda, before we discovered you’d broken with T’Challa and the j’Kuwali...”

“ _Steal_ me?”

He shrugs, smiling. “Why not? If you were willing to marry them, why not us?”

 _There were no agreements,_ she told N’Kechi when he asked. Because Maria wasn’t the kind of woman with whom people made agreements; she was the kind of person with whom people made _arrangements_ – a night here, a night there, _ad hoc_ , in the moment.

And then one day later, she was listening to T’Challa, Okoye, and N’Kechi propose a royal _sedoretu_.

In the back of her head, Maria thinks this is turning out to be quite a busy year for her – not one, but two _sedoretu_ proposals in the space of three months.

She regards Bucky and the phone – Natasha having a part of this conversation – and contemplates a _sedoretu_ of people she trusts, of people who’ll watch her back, of people who _love_ her—

Maria looks at Steve.

Where Bucky’s relaxed and confident – even eager, Steve is wired and tense as he watches her with a steady, wary look. He’s silent, uninvolved. And that’s not Steve when he believes in something. When he wants something he argues and he cozens, he looks for ways to make it work, and he keeps trying until he _makes_ it work.

Which means Maria’s being asked because Bucky and Natasha want her, not because Steve does.

Something changed after Ultron; shifting the balance of their relationship. And Maria stepped back at first because it was one thing to be in a sexual relationship with Steve while working with the Avengers, and it was another to do it while working with the Avengers in a facility full of people who would _also_ judge her for being in a sexual relationship with Steve. She thought they’d work something out, but then he’d started calling Sharon, and asking where their never-formal relationship stood was awkward as hell when he was clearly pursuing someone else.

So when Nick asked for her assistance, Maria walked away without looking back.

And Steve never tried to contact her – not when she left, not when he found out about the Accords, not when he and Tony laid down the lines among the Avengers, not when Bucky went into cryostasis in Wakanda.

_Be careful around him; I don’t want him hurt._

Sharon wouldn’t share him with Bucky, but maybe Maria will?

Her voice sounds flat and husky, even to her own ears.“So I’d complete your pre-planned _sedoretu_ , then, all nice and neat?”

Steve blinks, Bucky sits up on his section of couch; “Maria—”

“ _James—_ ” Nat hisses.

Maria is struggling with words for a moment, with a response. All she can think is, _I deserve more than second place._

But even that’s wrong – she never expected to be a priority for anyone. What she really doesn’t want is to be tacked on at the end, added in because the other two told Steve they needed a fourth and she suited them all. It’s a small selfishness, but Maria’s always known she’s not the sort of woman that men fall in love with; she doesn’t need to be reminded of it in her marriage, no matter how kind Steve will be about it.

And he _will_ be kind about it.

“Thanks.” She says it calmly and crisply because the sudden closing of her throat wants to make speech difficult, and she doesn’t dare let them see— “Thanks but no thanks. I can’t— I don’t want—”

_I don’t want to be the add-on._

“Maria, we can take Evening marriage out— ” Bucky makes a noise of protest in the back of his throat, and Maria glances his way. But Steve doesn’t stop. “We’ll take it off the table.” He rushes the concession out, his voice stronger. “If you don’t want me—”

“If _I_ don’t want _you_ —?” The laugh escapes her, and this time it _is_ a sob. He really doesn’t get it. “Steve, if I choose to go into an Evening marriage, it will be with someone who wants _me_ rather than asking for the convenience of me to the other people he’s in an arrangement with! At least N’Kechi had the decency to invite me into his bed first!”

Maria’s gaze drops to the plate in her lap and the ones on the coffee table, and she mindlessly stacks them, one on top of each other and fights back the desire to drop them just to hear something shatter. Because if it’s not something else, it might end up being her.

She starts to rise. If she’s going to lose it, she’s not going to do it for an audience—

A hand closes over hers, fingers curling into hers as Steve sits down beside her.

“Maria...” The rueful tenderness in his voice wrenches at her. “You might just be the most inconvenient woman I’ve ever loved. And that’s when you count falling in love while fighting a war, and trying to date while being an international fugitive.”

Across the room, Bucky snorts, and there’s a sound that might be a cough from Nat on the phone. Steve doesn’t look around; for all the attention he pays them, they might not even be there. He’s smiling – sort of. It’s that hopeful, not-quite-sure look that says a grin is hiding just behind his mouth.

It steals her breath and stutters her thoughts.

“If you think you’re just convenient to me, the only thing I’m sure of is that I’m an inconvenience to you – someone you’ll never acknowledge in public because if you do, then you’ll lose everything else you’ve worked for.”

“I can’t—Steve—”

He holds up his free hand. “I don’t expect that of you. I know better now – Buck slapped me with it often enough.”

“At least a dozen times before he got it,” Bucky adds.

“Well, he’s got a hard head,” Nat remarks in sweetly pointed tones. “And he’s stubborn to boot.”

Steve rolls his eyes, and Maria bites back a smile at the interplay. Then she goes quivering-still as he turns back to her and gives their joined hands a little squeeze. “But Maria, the Evening man I love, and the Morning woman we both love, are asking to make a marriage with an Evening woman we _all_ love – if she’s willing to take us. And if she isn’t— If she doesn’t want us – or...or just one of us...”

“Then we’ll kick him out and find someone you _do_ want.”

Steve’s expression is beyond priceless – an exasperated bemusement that says everything about how much this means to him; to have Bucky and Nat and _her_ — And the tightness in her throat and chest eases at Bucky’s laughing offer. It’s a joke, but it’s also not a joke. And that he made it matters.

“If you think I don’t want you,” Steve says softly, “invite me to your bed and find out just how fast I’ll accept. And if you don’t want me, then...we’ll leave the Evening marriage on the table. For now.”

The hopeful, not-quite-sure expression has shifted now, still hopeful, but prepared for a disappointment. If she refuses them – if she rejects him – then his expression will go tense and still, subtle shades of buttoned-down pain before it’s shut away.

Maria looks from him to Bucky to the phone sitting between them all.

“Someone to trust?” She looks at the phone, but knows that Nat understands who the question is directed at.

Still, Nat’s response takes a moment. _“If you’re willing. If it’s enough._ ”

She looks back at Steve, still holding her hand, still awaiting her answer.

An agreement to love and trust and be there – not just an arrangement to hang out or have sex whenever it’s convenient.

A _sedoretu_ to have and to hold.

“Yes,” she tells him – tells _them –_ and watches joy and relief relax Steve’s face, even as Bucky grins, and the Nat exhales. “Yes, it’s enough.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been a crazy long ride for all of us - me, included! I knew where they were going to end up, but the how of the situation has been a slow discovery.
> 
> One more chapter, and we're done. (Hopefully before Black Panther starts publically showing.)


	9. Chapter 9

Steve knows it’s too much to hope that Maria’s still in bed when he comes back upstairs from seeing Bucky out.

The bed is empty, but both bedside and ensuite lights are on. Steve sits down on the edge of the bed and waits for her to come out. Yes, he could have gone back to the room he picked for himself, but he slept here last night, in her arms. And he’d like to pull her back into bed and hold her for an hour or two longer before the demands of her life begin.

Well, he wouldn’t object to having sex again, either. Comfortable morning sex, slow and intimate and intense – sex when Maria’s brain isn’t yet engaged in all the things in her life that need doing and he’s the only thing on her mind. But that’s up to Maria.

He’s not too hopeful when she blinks at the sight of him as she emerges from the bathroom. Then she flicks off the light and comes towards the bed.

“He’s gone?”

“Yeah. He’ll call if he needs clarification on anything.”

“How are you feeling about that?”

Maria starts to sit beside him, but Steve has other ideas. He tugs her into his lap until she’s straddling him, her arms around his neck.

“About Bucky going out on missions? Or about this?” Her skin is still warm under the sleeping tee, and he splays his palms in the small of her back, revelling in the way she arches a little under his touch.

“Bucky.”

“Nope,” he says, leaning in to nip at her throat with a grin. “ _Steve_.”

Maybe he deserves the smack on his shoulder for that, but it’s not like he can’t take her ire. “I’m letting him make his own choices about whether or not to do missions,” he murmurs into her skin. “I’m not demanding that you marry us in public so long as you’re ours in private.”

“But you’re not happy about it.”

Steve exhales. The last six weeks with Bucky have been...educational for him, learning how to relate to Bucky in the now and not the then, understanding why he struggled in his relationship with Maria the first time.

He tilts his head back so they’re face to face, so she can see his feelings, so he can read her expression.

“T’Challa’s sedoretu would have had the right to claim you openly.”

Talking about it now – even now that she’s promised herself to them – his throat closes up.

The last two months have been hell, fighting thoughts that have dogged him every time he allowed himself to think about the _sedoretu_ that Bucky and Nat were so intent on building. Knowing that, even if Maria accepted him, there would be terms which he’d have to accept. His, theirs, but never to others – never in public.

“You nearly chose N’Kechi j’Kuwali to be yours before God and man and who knows what else. And all I’ve ever been is your dirty little secret.”

“That’s not—” Maria stops, and her hand brushes along his jaw, teasing the edges of his beard. “Steve.”

Steve swallows and makes himself look Maria in the eye, hoping she’ll understand. “And I know why—I get why you can’t take us openly, Maria. But I’m still struggling with it. So, I’m glad you’re mine – and I’m yours – but it’s...still complicated.” The thought of her smiling at another man, taking his hand, holding it high before the world guts him. He can never have that. He has to remember to be content with what he does have, but it still aches. He leans into her touch, reminding himself. “Okay?”

“Okay.” She hesitates, then brushes her mouth across his. “Thank you for understanding, Steve.”

Steve angles his head, going back for another kiss. “You’re welcome.” His arms pulls her in closer, and he slides his hands up to her flanks, making her shiver, before tugging her t-shirt over her head. “This is mine, at least,” he murmurs as he strokes his tongue down her throat, as he trails his fingertips down over her breasts.

“Yes,” Maria agrees, and his shirt bunches up beneath her fingertips. “This is ours.”

‘This’ is uncomplicated: sex and pleasure and trust and love. Maria’s laugh as she fondles him, the shuddering pleasure of her sinking down on him, the look in her eyes as he tips her face to his and moves in her with slow and easy thrusts until she’s trembling, arching, gasping. Her hands claw at his back, marking him as hers and Steve takes the sting gladly, marked for an hour, just until his skin heals...

Afterwards, they drowse until she gets up, then they shower, he goes back to his room and shaves, and when he gets downstairs, she’s made coffee for them both, and exchanges his cup for a kiss that nearly lands them back in bed.

It’s a good start to a day that feels...pleasantly domestic.

Steve makes them breakfast, Maria goes through her mail. They sit and watch the news, sock-footed and casual. He reads, she works on her laptop; he snacks, she takes a call that sounds like a rejig of a mission that’s just uncovered new intel that could jeopardise the outcome. He goes out into town, sees nothing untoward, and comes back with lunch.

He doesn’t text Bucky to see where he is, what he’s doing. He wants to. Several times, he pulls out his cellphone and unlocks it, but puts it away before he sets fingers to message. He glances out at the mountainous slopes around them and tells himself to relax. He reminds himself that Bucky knows how to look after himself better than Steve knows how to look after him.

The same can’t be said of Maria, who stares blankly at the food containers he’s set out on the coffee table when she comes inside. “It’s lunchtime already?”

“You’ve got a clock on your laptop.”

“I’ve been busy!”

He hands her a plate. “Eat. Or graze, if you must.”

She grazes, and Steve reflects that this has been the pattern of his life with Bucky for the last couple of months, minus the laptop and phone, and with less grazing. For the first three weeks, it was minus the sex, too, but he didn’t care about the sex, because he had _Bucky_ back.

Now, he has Maria back, too.

And with her, the circle completes: Maria to Natasha to Bucky and back to Steve again – a home that has nothing to do with walls. The man who wanted peace and a family went into the ice and another man came out, but that man still needed to know his place, where he belonged, who he belonged to.

It’s love that wraps around his chest and squeezes tight as he sits back and watches her work, as he looks up from his skim of the news and finds her watching him with the blank gaze that says she’s not seeing _him_ , just using him as a visual rest, as he watches her grope for the fork while she’s reading a document – and accidentally hit the handle instead of gripping it.

Rice noodles catapult into the air, splattering across the TV showing the afternoon news.

Steve laughs. It’s not just the mess, it’s the look on Maria’s face, the way her shoulders deflate, the glare she fixes upon him. He wants to crawl across the lounge and kiss that scowl off her mouth, pull her into his lap and just wrap his arms around her as the noodles slowly slide down the TV screen.

Then her phone rings – not her usual ringtone, a piece he doesn’t recognise.

Maria’s expression goes blank as she picks up. “How long do we have?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says on the other end of the line. Even across the room, Steve can hear the frustration bleeding through her voice. “But the chatter is at least thirty minutes old.”

“So could be five minutes or fifty,” Maria murmured. “Where are you?”

“Just coming across Hungary now. ETA Forty-five.”

“Negative. We’ll be out in thirty. Contact Coldfield for sunset details, Mountain Two.”

“Coldfield, Mountain Two, sunset. Copy that.” Natasha pauses. “Be careful.”

Steve is up and moving as Maria hangs up. “Thirty minutes isn’t enough to clear the house.”

Maria’s already typing on the laptop. “Then we don’t clear house. Grab your gear and meet me in the downstairs bathroom.”

“Bucky—”

“Is Coldfield.” She’s still typing.

“Do you need anything—?”

“I have a stash.” But of course she does. She’s Maria, she’s organised, she’s got an exit plan, and this is just one more reason why he loves her. Steve shakes his head even as she looks up, disbelieving that he’s still here.

“Steve, _go_!”

Steve goes.

* * *

Four men against the Black Widow are no odds worth taking, especially when she’s been given the opportunity to prepare her ground.

And Natasha’s been here for nearly two hours.

The men – armed and armoured – are dead almost before they realise who they’ve found. The fourth puts up a fight, but his moves are sloppy, careless in his assurance of the superiority of numbers.

Natasha drags the dead men away from the crack in the rocks where she was waiting for the others, piling the bodies haphazardly off to the side. She takes a few minutes to search through their pockets for anything that might suggest who sent them or why, because the leak of information about Maria and her mission is a concern.

No hints or clues, the make of their weapons is nothing easily identifiable, and there’s nothing about their appearance that makes them immediately stand out. She doesn’t have the energy or inclination to do much more than check their equipment. Her skin is buzzing, and her senses are fractured. She goes back to the niche where she was waiting before her vigil was interrupted and tries to let her mind disconnect.

She can’t focus. The cold is beginning to press in on her. She pulls on a fleecy jacket she discarded when the first two men stumbled into the clearing and waits for the jitters to ease.

They don’t.

It’s nothing as visible as shaking; the hands wrapped around the thermos are steady, her breathing is even and calm, but her mind skitters, and it’s only with hard effort that she marshals her thoughts.

She hasn’t had this kind of reaction to a kill since she graduated the Red Room.

Bushes rustle a little way away, and she slips her weapon quietly from its holster, listening to the shifting sound of the wind. After the men stumbled into her camp, she didn’t go back to check her triplines; they were mostly a precaution anyway. The rustling continues, a shift and sway of leaves and branches in a seemingly random rhythm. Natasha catches her breath and eases her grip on the trigger.

Still, it’s not until James pauses at the edge of the camp, his hands carefully away from his body, the disguise mesh dangling from his hand, that Natasha lowers the gun.

“Honey, I’m home,” he murmurs. Although his smile is fractional, there’s warmth in his voice, a tender timbre to his tone. Natasha stands as he as he crunches across the snow towards her, reaching out to receive and be received into her arms. And as he tucks his chin into the curve of her neck, Natasha relaxes.

He’s here. It’s real – the weeks in Wakanda, their agreement, Maria’s consent – all real.

She pulls back. “Have you heard from them?”

“Not since they sent the notice.” He glances at the corpses laid out and chilling in the snow. “Any markings?”

“Nothing of note. I don’t think they were expecting us – just Maria.”

His expression hardens as he looks at their gear and equipment. “They came to capture, probably torture. Is it related to the mission?”

“Hard to tell.” She can think now, can reason through it, even with his gaze close and tender on her face. “But my instincts say ‘no’.” There’s not enough weaponry for the oligarch whose device Maria intended to steal. “What?”

He’s studying her face, his brow slightly furrowed. “You dyed your hair.”

“You grew a beard!”

The curve of his lips softens his expression. “It’s softer than the stubble.”

“Steve’s opinion doesn’t count.”

“Well, judge for yourself, then...” His eyes gleam as he leans in, his mouth yearning towards hers.

Their lips have barely touched when he pulls back, turning to look at the treeline. Natasha reacts to the tension, silently pulling her weapon again, even as she crouches down and angles herself so she has clear firing lines. She listens to the wind, whipping through the trees and across the rocks, and then hears what James noted before – the soft swish of skis making their way through powder and ice.

Is it Maria and Steve? Another group hunting them? Or someone else?

James glances at her, signals for her to stay watchful, and moves out to the edge of the clearing, his bootsteps across the snow the barest of sound. Natasha contemplates going with him – she’s no longer the neophyte graduate of the Red Room – but his instincts are good, she has no reason to distrust them. Although, even when he relaxes subtly, and gives the all-clear signal, she doesn’t lower her guard.

Not until Maria skis into the centre of the clearing, sending up a wave of soft snow as she halts.

Her gaze skims the camp, taking everything in before she looks up at Natasha. “You’ve been busy.”

“Look who’s talking.”

There’s a moment of hesitation, when they stare at each other, almost uncertain of how this will work. They were never casually affectionate in public, even when they were occasional lovers – that just wasn’t the way they operated. It’s not the way they’re going to work in future. And yet...

Maria’s gaze drifts over Natasha’s face like the caress of fingers, even as she steps out of her skis and asks, “Any ID on who’s after us?”

“There might be something on the weapons trace. Otherwise, no.” Natasha takes the ski poles Maria holds out, then figures there won’t be a better time, and steps in, sliding one hand around Maria’s neck, pulling her down.

It’s been so long. But Maria’s lips part in acceptance and welcome. She leans in, her finger just tipping up Natasha’s face as they slip into sweetness. Behind them, the guys pause in their conversation.

And Natasha lets herself believe it’s real – Natasha and Maria and James and Steve, to have and to hold and to keep and to trust...

There’s a cough from behind them. “I hate to break you guys up,” James drawls, “but company’s coming and they’re not being quiet about it.”

Maria turns to pick up the skis, only to find that Steve’s already got them. The triumphal glimmer of his smile makes Natasha bite back a laugh before Maria turns back, caught between exasperation and affection, but her, “Lead the way,” is as brisk as ever.

They move quickly through the dusk, Natasha in the lead. She can hear the others behind her, their footsteps, their breathing, each one as familiar to her as her own skin, trusted and trusting. And she doesn’t need to turn to know that Maria’s already planning where they’re headed next, that Steve is watching the treeline for surprises, that James has fallen into rearguard knowing what to look for.

Like a team that pulls together, but more – a marriage.

 _Her_ marriage.

Long before they reach the Quinjet, Natasha can hear the snowmobile’s roar through the still air. The last fifty yards are taken at a dead run. Steve sprints ahead, instructed to start the engines and warm up the weapons, ready for Natasha to start firing the instant she gets in.

Maria drops back and James keeps pace with her. Natasha doesn’t need to be told that they’ll try something to get their pursuers off their trail. They’re handler and agent, Evening, thinking in shadows.

Trusted and trusting, Natasha reaches the Quinjet ramp and sprints up it, swinging into the auxiliary control and bringing up the night vision display for the weapons as she slips on the headset. “How many and how far?”

Steve is flipping switches, not bothering with concealment as he starts up the engines. “Two on the vehicle, but others are closing in on them—”

There’s a muffled boom outside, and the shockwave trembles the Quinjet.

“Way too close,” Nat mutters. “Now hurry up!”

Steve glances back. “They’re coming—”

She doesn’t ask how he knows, how he can tell. The underside display shows two figures running, one limping a little, the other pushing her ahead, urging her on. Natasha takes control of the guns and fires them over their heads, into the shadowy landscape beyond—

Maria stumbles, jerking sharply. Without breaking stride, James sweeps her up and keeps running.

“What—?” Steve glances over at her display, but James is already racing up the ramp.

“Let’s go!”

Steve lifts them off the ground, hard acceleration. With the ramp closing behind the other two, Natasha fires the external guns into the shadowy underbrush, deterrence rather than death. Proximity alarms blare a warning – incoming RPG – and James swears, a vicious streak of curses.

“Hold on,” Steve says, lifting his voice. “Could get bumpy—”

“Maria’s shot.” James shouts back. “Give me time to get her strapped in—”

“No time!”

Natasha eels out of the co-pilot station even as Steve veers hard left, then pulls them into a steep climb. She stumbles, but keeps her grip on the overhead strut even as her feet leave the floor. James has anchored Maria with his own body, his fingers dragging precariously at the floor as he tries to form a cage over her body without crushing her. Maria’s head tilts back with a wince, her eyes meeting Natasha’s before they scrunch closed, her chest rising and falling faster than usual as she conserves her strength to deal with the pain, with the effects of velocity and gravity.

“Goddamit, Steve!”

“I had to!” He pauses. “How bad is it?”

But Natasha’s already seen the thin stream of blood that slid across the floor as the Quinjet tilted. Maria’s drawn face and pallor fill her field of vision. Without looking away, she calls to Steve. “Make for Switzerland. There’s a facility there— Trauma Zentrum. It’ll be in the passcoded databanks. Call them and let them know we’re coming.”

In the meantime—

James is looking at her.

“First aid kit,” she says. It’s something they can do – chill the area, slow the bloodflow, keep the rest of her warm. As he leaps up to get it, Natasha leans over and brushes her palm over Maria’s waxen cheek, already going into shock. “Hold on.”

It’s an order and a prayer.

Maria swallows hard, her neck and jaw locked in pain, but her cold cheek presses into Nat’s hand.

They hold on.

* * *

The nondescript facility sits in Switzerland, hiding some of the best technology in the world. It’s not a patch on Wakanda, but where is? And the other two already had that argument while Bucky carefully worked to keep Maria comfortable.

“ _If we go back to Wakanda, we won’t be leaving,_ ” Natalia said when Steve suggested going south. “ _Not with Maria anyway._ ”

“ _T’Challa wouldn’t do that._ ”

“ _It’s not T’Challa I’m worried about!_ ”

Bucky sided with Natalia. Switzerland _was_ closer.

Now, sitting in the antechamber where he was put to wait, Bucky second-guesses himself. If the medical staff here can’t stabilise Maria, then they’ll have to make contact with T’Challa in Wakanda – if he’ll answer, if he’ll allow it, if they have to navigate Wakandan politics all over again...

They will, because it’s Maria.

He clenches his hands, uselessly. Something tore as they lifted her onto the gurney; her blood pressure dropped like a stone and the conversation buzzed with abrupt urgency.

“ _What if I...?_ ”

“ _You can’t think of that._ ” But Steve couldn’t continue the reassurance. Someone called him over, asking questions, drawing him away. Bucky was shown to the waiting room and left with his thoughts.

It’s been nearly an hour now.

He hasn’t gone out, although he could. He didn’t want to walk into the hallways of a strange facility wearing his own face, disturbing the peace when Maria needed all the attention on her.

There are footsteps outside, a brisk knock on the door, and it opens to show the dark woman with the biomechanical eye who didn’t bat an eyelash at the sight of the Winter Soldier, but introduced herself as, “ _‘Amador’. ‘Agent Amador’ if you must, but ‘Amador’ will be fine._ ”

“Maria’s in surgery,” she tells him. “Romanoff’s watching from the viewing room, you’re welcome to go and watch from there or stay here if you prefer. Obviously, we can’t have you just wandering around, although,” her mouth twists a little, “we’re not exactly going to try to stop you if you decide to go on a rampage or break out.”

Bucky snorts as he stands up. “A rampage wouldn’t do Maria any good. And where else do I have to go?”

This is where his _sedoretu_ is – his husband, his wife, his sister-wife. If his presence endangered them, risked Maria’s treatment, he’d never have shown his face in these halls. But the Trauma Zentrum personnel who came to take Maria away barely glanced at him; he was with Maria Hill, and the Black Widow, and Captain America, and that was enough for them – at least for the moment.

When dawn comes it might be a different matter. Until then, Bucky’s going to stay right here.

Out in the corridor, Steve is leaning against the wall, his arms folded in such a way that it looks like he’s holding himself together. Bucky pulls him into a close hug. “Bear up, asshole.”

The snort is short, but the breath that follows is shaky. “She only just said yes.”

“Then she’s got something to live for.” Bucky turns to Amador, who’s watching them with a sudden, bright comprehension in her expression. “Lead the way.”

She hesitates, then turns away and heads off down the corridor.

Bucky wonders if it’s just his imagination that paints her gait as stiff and disapproving, or if this is the way she usually walks. Rather than dwell on that, he asks after Maria. “Did they say what they’re doing?”

“Taking out the bullet, stitching up what it damaged on the way in.” Amador shrugs but doesn’t look back. “We have two of our best surgeons working on her, and there’s a cradle on its way from South Korea to help with recovery.”

Steve rouses from his misery. “Is Dr. Cho coming too?”

“No.” The answer is simple. “But it was sent with her authorisation.”

Two of the best surgeons, a cradle instantly sent with the authorisation of its creator—That’s a lot of authority, a lot of care.

And then there’s the former Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, standing at the window.

Bucky stops, his heart slamming into his ribs as he registers the man standing beside Natalia. Hands are clasped behind his back like a general surveying his troops, his gaze on the surgery taking place in the next room.

_I tried to kill my father-in-law._

It was a joke. But it also wasn’t. There’s no escaping what he was, what he did. The personnel in this facility know what he is by his reputation. The man standing by Natalia, watching Maria’s surgery, knows what Bucky is through painful experience – and has the scars to prove it.

The emotion that dries his mouth is no more rational than Natalia’s insistence that they can’t go back to Wakanda, yet Bucky’s paralyzed. He’s been trained to move past the fear – both in the war and as the Winter Soldier – but none of that is useful right now. He can’t make himself take that step forward.

Then Steve’s hand folds over his, a fierce and tender grip that bridges the moment between seeing Nick Fury and when the man turns, alerted by Amador’s entry. One dark eye narrows and wide nostrils flare, but what captures Bucky’s attention is the pale slide of light off Natalia’s hair and the way her expression turns to relief as she spots them.

He goes to her, moving to her other side, further away from Fury. The instinct to slide an arm around the back of her shoulders is answered by an arm wrapping around his waist. Steve takes up position on her other side, his expression bleak as he stares through the glass at the surgery taking place.

“What did the surgeons say?”

“Nicked artery.” Fury’s eyes flick their way, then fix back upon the surgeons and the woman they’re working on. “Apparently the pressure of the bullet was holding it together, but it shifted when they moved her.”

When _Bucky_ moved her.

He felt the graze of the shot over the vibranium arm, knows that he slowed it a little, maybe skewed the trajectory some. But it still hit Maria, wounded her, bled her out. God only knows what other damage he did inside her by swinging her up into his arms to get them onto the Quinjet. A great start to a marriage, to get his sister-wife half-killed—

“Stop it, James.” He glances down at Natalia, startled by the way she read his mind, only to realise that in holding her so close, she felt his reaction. Her gaze is uncompromising, and her tone is an order. “Don’t think it.”

“I was behind her. It should have been me.”

“Buck—”

“I made her a target.”

Fury snorts. “As though Maria hasn’t been painting targets on her own back ever since she joined S.H.I.E.L.D – and before. It’s not all about you, Barnes.”

“Fury—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I hurt his feelings?” The glance he gives Steve is hard as nails. “Excuse me while I don’t give a damn. One of my best is down, and I’m not inclined to be nice about it.”

“’ _One of your best_ ’?” Steve echoes incredulously. “She’s not one of your agents anymore!”

The twitch of his mouth might be a sardonic smile. “Maria’s loyalties come in a multitude of layers, Rogers, but all of them run deep. You should know that by now. And if you think a handful of promises gives you the absolute right to her time and energy, then you’re living in the wrong century.”

There’s no good place for this to go, Bucky realises. They’re complicated allies at best, each of them thinking they know what to do, how the game should run. They both have the personal and professional charisma to change the game simply by stepping in to the arena. And then there’s Maria – one more piece connecting them – and probably the most contentious one because she’s never been in question before, and each one assumes they have first right to her.

He wants to step in. Their issues with each other will hurt Maria most, and she can’t afford this right now – none of them can.

“Nick.” Natalia cuts through whatever response Steve has opened his mouth to make. “Now isn’t the time.”

“ _Never_ is the time,” Amador says, pragmatic and cutting. “And something’s happening.”

Heads turn back to the glass, where one of the surgeons has paused, his arm moving out of sight of the window. Although his face is covered by the mask, Bucky has the impression he’s frowning as he turns to say something to another surgeon. There’s a moment when everything slows, grinding to a standstill. Then, just as suddenly, everyone picks up again. People move swiftly around, reporting readings, hooking up more blood bags, not panicked or urgent, not yet, just...moving with purpose.

Natalia shakes off Bucky’s arm and takes a step towards the glass, her fingertips pressing against the sill, her weight shifting as she huffs suddenly and looks at Steve. “Last time we did this, Maria was on this side of the glass.”

“I was trying not to remember.” Bucky can almost feel the frustration winding through Steve. “Why doesn’t anyone in there tell us what’s happening?”

“You can ask,” says Fury. “But you’ll only divide their attention.” The man seems to coil in on himself for a moment, then turns on his heel and strides out without a word.

Amador looks at Natalia and arches a brow.

“It’s been a rough few years,” Natalia answers.

“No kidding,” Amador says and sighs. “I’ll check where the cradle’s at. Don’t forget to talk to Alan about somewhere to stay.”

“We’re not going anywhere.”

Amador glances at Steve. The biomechanical iris narrows down to a pinpoint then resumes its normal appearance. She looks back at Natalia, quite pointedly. “I’ll leave that with you, then.”

Bucky waits until her bootsteps fade away down the same corridor Fury’s did. “Do you have to get _everyone_ offside, asshole?”

“She’s ours,” Steve says flatly. “We have the right—”

“Not officially,” Natalia murmurs.

And of all the things to say to Steve at this moment, that might be the worst. Maybe Bucky did too good a job of reminding Steve of all the things Maria had to get past in order to be with him the first time, let alone now. Because now, _all_ Steve sees is the barriers, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get through them.

Hasn’t that always been Steve’s way?

From his health, to the art degree he got, to trying to join the army, to taking down the Red Skull – all the things he’s done since, up to defending Bucky against everyone else in the world, and his desperate declaration last night when Maria was on the verge of walking away. And now Steve is looking like he might argue the point with Natalia – as though this is one more battle he has to fight.

“She’s ours,” Bucky agrees swiftly. “We just...might have to tread more carefully to have her. Other people have a right to care for her, too.”

There’s a moment in which Bucky thinks that this whole thing might break before they’ve even had the chance to pull it together. Then Steve exhales. “I don’t—I don’t want—”

“You don’t want to lose her,” Bucky says quietly. “Neither do we.”

“Ours out of the public eye,” Natalia reiterates. “It has to be enough, Steve.”

Does she know she’s echoed last night’s question to Maria? Bucky isn’t sure, but either way he’s waiting for Steve’s answer. He knows what it is, of course – the same one that it’s been for months. But the more often that Steve accepts it, the easier this will be on all of them, including Steve.

Steve looks from Natalia to Bucky, from Bucky to the medical personnel swarming around Maria, and back to Natalia. “It _is_ enough,” he says at last. “It’s just...”

“It’s just hard to stand aside and watch.”

“Yes.”

The way he says it sounds like a defeat. And Bucky starts to step around Natalia, intending to comfort—

Natalia moves. Steps in ahead of him, albeit hesitantly, as though unsure of her reception. But after a moment, Steve lifts his arm, accepts her cheek against his shoulder, and presses his cheek against her head, shutting his eyes tight.

Bucky watches them, reassured, then slips his arm around Natalia’s back to grip Steve’s shoulder, hard and reassuring.

This is them. With Maria, it’s enough.

They wait together.

* * *

Consciousness is a cacophony of sensation. Out of the darkness looms pain, voices floating in vague cadences above her head. Her eyes are stung with light and the harshness of her breathing echoes back at her from a plastic mask over her mouth. She’s weightless, suspended in nothingness when someone growls – _if you wanted payback for the last time I scared you, Maria, goddamn but there were better ways to take it_ – then surrounded, enclosed, enfolded as voices lift in belligerence—

She’s back in her room in Stark Towers. The air-conditioning is just how she likes it, the sheets are crisp and clean and soft. Steve’s stretched out, warm and slumbrous on the mattress behind her – _asshole likes to know you’re in arm’s reach –_ voices murmuring softly over and around her. Natasha’s there, fingers moving up and down her arms, a possessive tactility that no-one would ever have expected from the Widow, before they slide tenderly into hers and turn so their hands are palm to palm—

Metal trails across her brow, cooling and soothing, while the rough brush of stubble prickles as he bends down close to her jaw and murmurs, _You’re not rid of us that easily—_

Maria opens her eyes.

A gently lit room – soft lights set into the architraves that make the ceiling glow and which are turned right down so it’s mostly dark. Even as she half sits up, they brighten, reacting to her movement – and possibly to the monitoring stickers on her wrists and chest and temples.

The bed is massive, but she’s the only one in it. Both the hospital gown she’s wearing and the sheets she’s lying in are fresh cotton, but her panties are comfortable and probably her own. It’s quiet – a hushed quietness, with the very distant sound of traffic and other noises.

She’s not in the mountains anymore.

As she kicks her legs through the crisp, clean sheets, she becomes aware of the ache in her lower back. Dull and distant, more like a muscle strain than a bullet wound—

Her eyes fly open as there’s a knock at the door. She’s still scrambling to find her voice – her throat feels slightly raw – as the door opens a crack and Akela peers in. “All awake?”

“Mostly.” Maria relaxes a little, her brain starting to put the pieces together. Trauma Zentrum to start with, and probably surgery. Although if there was surgery then everything should hurt more...

Akela eases down at the foot of the bed, comfortably familiar. “How’s the pain?”

“What pain?” Maria reaches behind her, careful in case something hurts. But nothing does. And there’s no wound. Maybe a small, slightly-raised scar by her spine, but otherwise nothing. She looks at Akela. “Name, rank, and serial first.”

It’s an identity confirmation, and Akela names herself, but cites Maria’s rank and serial number, finishing with, “All stop?”

“All stop.” Maria relaxes, just a little. “This isn’t Trauma Zentrum.” It’s too...nice.

“A private residence, care of Pepper Potts. Independent of Stark Industries,” Akela adds. “Rogers was very firm about that.”

Steve is here. Natasha, Bucky... Maria swallows back her blurted, _So it was real?_ Then she sorts back through the blur of her memories and realises they were all there. They stayed – at least for a while, at least between the times when she was under and when she was out.

Sudden concern clutches at her. “The mission?”

“The unobtainium’s still in play. Alan has it in hand, supplemented with intel that Barnes brought back.” Akela rolls her eyes. “Trust you to still be thinking of that after you’ve been shot!”

“It’s the job.” But under her insouciance, Akela looks tired and more than a little stressed. Maria doesn’t think that’s all her, but still... “How bad was it?”

“Well, you were shot – luckily, not directly in the spine. From what we can tell, Barnes slowed it down with that arm of his, but it still embedded close to your iliac artery and at some point that tore. Just a little, but enough to require six hours of surgery at Trauma Zentrum and a full day in the U-GIN cradle before being transferred out to your own private recovery room come safehouse...and here you are.”

Pepper. Maria resolves to call and say thanks. When she feels like she has the energy to pick something up again. Even sitting up is starting to exhaust her.

“In between when they brought you in and when they took you out, there were arguments. Oh, so many arguments. Who was your designated ‘next-of-kin’, who had the right to determine what should be done, who was going to stay by you.” Akela shrugs as she studies Maria with an intensity that’s all the more unnerving for her biomechanical eye. “Rogers was particularly bullish. Particularly around Fury.”

That’s not surprising. They’ve always had a complicated relationship with each other, and the addition of their connections with Nat and Maria only exacerbates that. More surprising to Maria is that Fury was here at all.

“Wasn’t he in the Ukraine?”

“He was. He arrived shortly after you did, all puffy and fluffy like a mother hen ready to defend her chicks.”

_If you wanted payback for the last time I scared you, Maria, goddamn but there were better ways to take it._

“More amusing when you’re _not_ the focus?” Maria asks acidly, because Akela is smirking, and she’s one of Fury’s ‘baby chicks’ too.

“ _So_ much more amusing.” Akela reins in her amusement. “Although you’ll be glad to hear that nobody died in the confrontations, plural, between him and Rogers. Although one of Dr. Cho’s staff was distinctly displeased about the shouting match over the cradle, and basically shooed them out.”

Maria grins, imagining one of the women she’s seen working with Helen standing up to the two of them, imagining Fury’s stiff outrage at being given orders, Steve’s restrained displeasure at being informed that he’s the problem. Then exhaustion hits her like a blanket flung over her head, smothering her ability to think. Suddenly, it’s an effort to keep her eyes open.

She forces herself to focus. Fury. Steve. “They’re still here?”

“Well, Fury left once you’d been decanted and the U-GIN biotechs pronounced you stable. But the others are still around. Barnes was talking of leaving – something about not putting you in harm’s way. The other two argued him out of it.” Akela rolls her eyes. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, Maria.”

Only she didn’t pick them. They picked her. And maybe it was convenience, but it was love, too.

“They okay?”

“Better than you. You look like you’re about to drop out.” Akela studies her. “Want me to send them in? Or give you some peace and let you sleep?”

She wants to see them. It’s a pressure beneath her breastbone that pushes at her throat. If she sees them, if they’re still here, then the other day – the other week, whenever it was – is real. But...she wrestles her thoughts out of the promising darkness...it doesn’t feel right to call them over just so she can prove to herself that they’re here.

Too much like needing them, perhaps?

While she hesitates, Akela snorts. “God, you’re really out of it, Maria. All right, lie down, and I’ll send them in anyway. Maybe once they see you’re alive, they’ll stop being such pests...”

She lies down, her thoughts clouding with exhaustion and beckoning sleep. Her body needs the rest – it’s still healing, even if the cradle did a lot of the repairs – but her heart wants to see _them_. And she doesn’t think she can stay awake long enough—

Vaguely, she’s aware of the lights dimming. The door closes, and she thinks, _no, send them in..._. But then there are voices – familiar and comforting, people in the room, moving around the bed, depressing the mattress under the weight of their bodies. A hand brushes over her cheek, a light and caressing touch.

“Still awake?” Natasha’s voice warms with a smile.

“Barely.”

Bucky is murmuring that this may not be the best time to disturb her—

The mattress behind her depresses. “Did you want to sleep?” There’s a thread of hesitation in Steve’s voice, questioning his welcome. “We can go if you want—?”

Maria rolls her head to the side, far enough to see the shadow of him looming at the edge of the bed. “Stay,” she manages. “Please.”

Natasha doesn’t hesitate. There’s the soft thud of shoes being shed, and she slides in between the sheets, close enough to cuddle. One hand slips into Maria’s, palm to palm, warm against the cool of Maria’s skin. “I’ll stay.”

“We all will,” Steve declares after a moment, and there’s a rustle of fabric as he sheds his jacket.

“Can this bed hold us all ?” Bucky mutters. But there’s a rustle of outer clothes being discarded before the mattress shifts again.

“Guess we’ll find out.” Steve slides across to Maria, curling up behind her. He seems hesitant to touch her at first. Maria reaches behind her and takes his hand and tugs him closer. Then he makes a noise like a sigh and settles right up against her, his arm around her waist, big spoon to her little one, his lips light and tender at her nape. “God, Maria, you scared us...”

“‘m still here,” she murmurs as sleep pulls her down.

They’re here and they’re hers. It’s both a terrifying thought and a warming one. People to belong to in a marriage that means something. People who are here, surrounding her, letting her sleep, but not leaving her alone.

“You don’t get rid of us that easily,” Bucky says softly. “Or, at all.”

“Have and hold,” she mumbles.

“Through mission retreat and gunshot wounds.” Nat’s breath mingles with hers.

“Always.” Steve relaxes against her nape. “Now, sleep.”

Maria falls asleep, her _sedoretu_ around her.

**Author's Note:**

> And we're done!
> 
> The original plan was to finish this six months ago, before Black Panther became hard canon. Alas for stubborn muses, characters who won't play ball (*cough*Natasha*cough*), and that pesky little thing called 'Life Outside Of Fandom', it's taken longer than expected.
> 
> There may still be an epilogue to the series (just as Peggy provided the prologue). Nick certainly has An Opinion On This Marriage, the question is whether he turns up long enough to give it. Also, _Infinity War_ , about which I have mixed feelings.
> 
> Thank you so much to my beta, **geckoholic** , and to everyone who read my fic these last few years, especially those who kudos'd and commented. Extra thanks goes to those who recommended my fic to others, and my love and emphatic appreciation to those who not only commented and kudos'd regularly, but also who held conversations and chatted with me in comments, on Tumblr, and DreamWidth, and other social media places.
> 
> I started writing niche in MCU fandom, back when Steve/Maria had less than a dozen fics to its tag, and five years and a hundred fics later, I'm still writing niche. Ah well, they do say begin as you mean to go on, don't they?
> 
> T.


End file.
